Or, What to Do when your Evaluation Period Is Up
One of the nice things about Server 2008 is that Microsoft is fairly generous with the evaluation period. You don’t have to enter a product key and you get 60 days of free usage, plus you can reset the clock three times (using slmgr –rearm) for a total of 240 days of free usage. When your “free look” period begins to wind down, you will see messages from Server 2008 at an increasing frequency, reminding you that Windows has not activated. You may also see a note on your desktop that your copy of Server 2008 is not genuine. When things start getting really irritating is when Windows decides to blow away your desktop background. (I love my desktop backgrounds, which are Hubble photographs from NASA.) If you decide to license your copy of Server 2008, you will need to either a) set up a KMS server, or b) obtain a Multiple Activation Key (e.g. from TechNet or MSDN if you are a subscriber). I thought that some of you might appreciate knowing the relevant syntax for the software licence manager (slmgr.vbs), so here goes. To display your activation status, type: slmgr -dli To enter the MAK, the syntax is: slmgr -ipk xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx where the X’s are to be replaced with the actual product key. To activate Windows, the syntax is: slgrm -ato Of course you can always do a reformat and start your eval period all over again, but if you have installed various apps and hotfixes and patches, and if you have access to a MAK, the above steps are surely handy.
