Note that there are many reasons why Microsoft Office 2010 on your VMware View desktops may not activate so the following is only 1 of the many out there.
Problem
You have just completed the deployment of a new pool of virtual desktops and this new pool is using a new KMS server set up to activate the Microsoft Office 2010 suite your virtual desktops have installed. You’ve made sure that your KMS server is installed, configured correctly, the proper KMS keys have been entered into your KMS server and Microsoft Office suite but still receive the following notification:
Product Activation Failed
You log onto the KMS server and see numerous event ID 12290 logged but noticed that while the virtual machine names change, the following value does not (see the string highlighted in RED)
An activation request has been processed.
Info:
0x0,5,SALES003.someDomain.com,18936124-98a3-4642-b57d-5ed5cc0a5add,2012/01/21 20:28,0,5,0,6f327760-8c5c-417c-9b61-836a98287e0c
An activation request has been processed.
Info:
0x0,5,SALES013.someDomain.com,18936124-98a3-4642-b57d-5ed5cc0a5add,2012/01/21 20:34,0,5,0,6f327760-8c5c-417c-9b61-836a98287e0c
To confirm that you are indeed using the same CMID on multiple virtual desktops, you can run the following command on your virtual desktops to display the CMID:
cscript “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice14OSPP.VBS” /dcmid
Solution
The reason why your Microsoft Office applications will not activate is because the CMID (Client Machine ID) for the Office suite is the same across all of your virtual desktops. This can happen if you forgot to rearm the Office 2010 suite before you deployed your new VMware View pool. Failure to rearm the Office 2010 suite will mean that all of the cloned virtual desktops, although quick prep-ed or sysprep-ed with new CMID for the Windows operating system, will retain the old Office 2010 CMID. More information about deploying Office with KMS can be found here:
Deploy volume activation of Office 2010
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee624357.aspx
Also note that in this example, the amount of Office 2010 client activations was less than 5 since it was a new deployment.
If you’re faced with such a situation, consider the following 2 options:
#1 – Rearm all of the virtual desktops’ Office 2010 suite
You can either do this manually if there aren’t a lot of desktops or run a batch script such as the following for Office 2010 64-bit installs:
“C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft SharedOfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatformospprearm.exe”
pause
… to rearm them then use the Volume Activation Management Tool (VAMT) too rekey and activate the Office suite.
#2 – Rearm your master images’ Office 2010 suite and recompose
You’ll have to fix your master image if you have forgotten to rearm the Office Suite prior to deploying your pool so if you can schedule downtime, fire up your master image, rearm the Office Suite, then recompose your desktops.
7 Responses
Excellent information.Keep sharing such great posts. virtual desktops
Wonderful. THis helped me. Keep writing.
May I be wrong, but Rearm function can be used only 5 or 6 times.
What to do when reach the limit?
i have come across the same issue and used the rearm command, which did work perfectly… unfortueatle i could only do it a few times before i ran out of rearm tries.
trying to find a way around this now.
Activate Microsoft office 2010 you can go to http://www.vanskeys.com to got an activation key.Hope can help you.
I ran across this problem – I had to rebuild a complex pair of desktop masters because I did not know about the CMID issue. (Somewhere around 5.1 or 5.5 VMware started re-activating licenses with each rebuild.
It's a good practice to rebuild the desktops every month or two for Windows updates, Java and Abdobe Rdr/Flash updates, etc. You would quickly reach the limit of 5 rearms.
I did the following – do NOT open office on th Master copy ever. Still ended up with activation warning a few weeks later (30 days?) A few OSPPREARM on a few clones fixed the problem temporarily.
Next to try – do updates, snapshot the master. Run OSPPREARM. snap again, use that for pool generation, then delete it; revert to pre-rearm master. Repeat next month.
Anon here again –
Also – another suggestion was to install the same KMS-activated Office on a couple of physical desktops too, so that there are always 5 different PC's asking for KMS activation each month. My 30 clones will activate if they are all the same CMID, the issue appears to be that the KMS server does not see 5 distinct CMID requests for activation. Running OSPPREARM on a few clones would work, but you would have to do that for every time you rebuild (recompose) the View pool.