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Troubleshooting Windows Activation

Posted on by Geoff / 9 Comments

[UPDATE: Updated to include just Windows 10 and 11. ]

Here are some troubleshooting steps — for my future reference as much as anyone else’s — for for gathering information for diagnosing and resolving Windows KMS client activation issues.

Quick Fix: Try this first!

Most Windows activation issues I’ve encountered are resolved by entering the appropriate product key (not a secret; see footnote). Windows 10 and 11 Enterprise share this KMS Client Product key:

NPPR9-FWDCX-D2C8J-H872K-2YT43

Enter the code above and attempt to reactivate. If it works, you should be all set. If it doesn’t, the following steps will help identify the issue.

Gathering Information.

Gathering data is essential to fixing problems. If you ask me (or other IT staff) for help with Windows activation, the first thing I will ask from you is the output of the commands below.

I recommend opening a text editor and copying all the commands and output into a file, which you can send to us if you need additional help resolving the activation issue.

NOTE: All these steps require running commands from a console window (cmd.exe), which you may need to run As Administrator. These commands work in Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10.

1. Run ipconfig /all to capture current IP configuration information.

This could tell us whether the system is in a netreg-ed subnet and needs to register at http://netreg.uvm.edu, or if there are other basic network configuration problems. We really just need the Ethernet adapter, assuming that’s what is being used to connect the system to the network. We don’t need all the additional tunneling adapters, etc. If someone is using a wireless adapter, possibly with the VPN client, then info about those adapters also should be captured.

Continue reading →

Posts

Disabling IPv6 in Vista

Posted on by Geoff / 0 Comment

As part of troubleshooting the Cisco VPN with my Vista system, I’ve been asked to “turn off” IPv6, just in case. I decided to take the comprehensive approach, as described in the IPv6 for Microsoft Windows FAQ, and use the registry:

Add the following registry value (DWORD type) set to 0xFFFFFFFF:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip6\Parameters\DisabledComponents

This method disables IPv6 on all your LAN interfaces, connections, and tunnel interfaces but does not disable the IPv6 loopback interface. You must restart the computer for this registry value to take effect.

Beware that there are Windows features, most prominently in my experience Windows Meeting Space, which require IPv6 to function. I think IPv6 is pretty cool, though, so I’ll turn it back on and keep thinking about how to integrate it into our infrastructure.

Resources:

Update:

It turns out that disabling IPv6 system-wide or just on the adapters involved in the VPN connection (Wireless and VPNVirtual adapters, in my case) has resolved the connectivity issues I have experienced most recently with the Cisco VPN. As someone who uses the IPv6-dependent applications, I find this less than optimal.

More IPv6 resources (added as I find them…)

Posts

Reset Offline Files cache

Posted on by Geoff / 3 Comments

For my reference, mostly…

In Windows XP: In Explore’s Tools → Folder Options → Offline Files, then press CTRL+SHIFT and click the “Delete Files” button. How Macintosh is that? I’ve had to perform that maneuver a few times. With Windows Vista and later, the reworked Offline Files facility has worked much better. But occasionally, the Offline Files database still gets munged.

NOTE: Once you set the value and reboot, all the content in the Offline Files cache for all accounts on the system is purged. You need to perform a sync operation in order to populate your files into the Offline Files cache again.

If you have files in the Offline Files cache that haven’t been successfully synced to the server, those files will be lost. For this reason, I will often make a local copy of “My Documents” to another folder on C: (e.g.: c:\temp\MyDocsCopy) while the network interfaces are disabled, to make sure I’m copying data from the cache. It never hurts to create a backup.

In Windows 7 and 8, the process requires setting a single registry value:

To reinitialize the Offline Files cache, create the following DWORD registry value with a value of 1 and restart the system.

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CSC\Parameters\FormatDatabase

Note that you will have to create the Parameters key, and any unsynchronized changes will be lost.  In addition, any files and folders pinned by means other than Folder Redirection or Group Policy will no longer be pinned on that client.

The setting of this registry value may be automated using REG.EXE.

In an elevated command prompt, run the following command.

REG ADD "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CSC\Parameters" /v FormatDatabase /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/230738
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/1073.robocopy-and-a-few-examples.aspx

Posts

LifeHacker – Best Free Apps for Windows Mobile

Posted on by Geoff / 0 Comment

LifeHacker has just posted a nice list of free applications for Windows Mobile, like my Treo 700w. Don’t skip the discussion thread; there are lots of folks mentioning applications I hadn’t heard of.

http://lifehacker.com/5041023/the-best-free-apps-for-your-windows-mobile-device

PS. I love Windows Mobile, but I think it’s the worst phone I’ve ever used. I have about one bar — and you know how a “bar” is a standard measure — of reception when I leave Burlington. I had a meeting Saturday evening, and I forgot an important paper. My spouse tried to call me when she found it, but I couldn’t get a call through until I was in Winooski. Grrrr!

Posts

Viewing Deleted objects in Active Directory

Posted on by Geoff / 1 Comment

Working through the AD preparation for an application install, and I’m logged into the emtpy root domain as a schema admin. Running the setup application, I get an error indicating that I don’t have rights to

    Organization Preparation         ……………………. FAILED
     You do not have permissions to read the security descriptor on CN=Deleted O
bjects,CN=Configuration,DC=ad,DC=uvm,DC=edu.

I need to confirm I can read the security descriptors for this object. Found a KB Article:

Viewing deleted objects in Active Directory

Before I dig deep with that, I also found this forum thread, suggesting that running the setup command in a console connection rather than RDP might help. I’m going to give that a try first.

Nice; that’s all it took. Onward and upward…

Posts

CLI configuration of network interfaces

Posted on by Geoff / 0 Comment

I like GUIs, but I also like getting things done via the command line. I was hunting around to see if there was a way to change the MTU setting for my NICs without having to edit the registry, and I found that the netsh interfaces context exposes this attribute:

netsh interface ipv4 show subinterfaces
netsh interface ipv4 set subinterface "Local Area Connection" mtu=1500 store=persistent

I used this to change the MTU for my Wifi and Ethernet interfaces from 1300 — Cisco’s preferred setting from Win9x days — back to the Windows default. And now the performance problem I was having yesterday has been resolved. 🙂

[ via http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winvista/t1158155937]

Posts

VPN trouble in Waterman Café

Posted on by Geoff / 0 Comment

I connected to Cat’s PAWS in the Waterman Café, and then ran the VPN client. I logged in and got connected. I received a GMail notification of an incoming message, and then started my mail client. Outlook couldn’t connect to imap.uvm.edu. I tried Thunderbird, which couldn’t connect either. Then I realized that none of my network apps were working.

I grabbed a screenshot of the VPN Status window, showing that I was connected. While I was saving that, I received notification from the VPN that my connection had been terminated. Grabbed a screenshot of that, too. Back to my office.

Forwarded the screenshots and the description above to Network Services. Maybe the logs will shed some light…

Posts

File hash verification utility

Posted on by Geoff / 0 Comment

Every now and then, I want to make sure that a file I’m downloading — especially from a mirror site — hasn’t been currupted in transit, or more likely poisoned with malware. I was downloading the ImgBurn utility from a mirror site today, and something made me think I should be careful.

The main site lists md5 and sha1 hashes, so I looked for a tool to calculate the hash of the file I had downloaded. I found the “File Checksum Integrity Verifier” tool — KB841290. It can derive md5, sha1, or both for one or more files.

I was surprised to find that the file I had downloaded from SpeedLabs mirror did not match:

//
// File Checksum Integrity Verifier version 2.05.
//
c4647eb75a2340af0f57a8bc3fb3d4e5a63f5172 setupimgburn_2.4.1.0.exe

I downloaded the file again from ImgBurn directly, and the hash matched. If I have a moment, I will try the mirror again, just in case it was a corrupt transfer. Maybe I’ll even run it in a VM, just to see what I get infected with.

Three cheers for geek intuition!

[UPDATE 2008-07-02] While skimming through Windows PowerShell Cookbook, I noted recipe 17.10, “Program: Get the MD5 or SHA1 Hash of a File.” Coolness!

Posts

SP1 activation issue solved

Posted on by Geoff / 0 Comment

Although we have not yet approved Vista SP1 for distribution via WSUS, I have worked with the beta and recently installed the release version via Windows Update. After the install, though, I was seeing errors when my system tried to renew its activations against our KMS.

When I ran slmgr -dli, it reported that my version of Vista was Enterprise Edition but also Retail Channel. I posted a message on the MS Vista installation and Setup forum, and a helpful Mr. Gorter suggested I change the product key, as documented in the Volume Activation 2.0 Deployment Guide.

I updated the product key and successfully activated against the KMS. I will be keeping an eye out for the next opportunity to install SP1 to check the product key before and after install.