How to activate Microsoft Operating System manually? — Top Tech Notes

When we install operating system, we need to activate every copy of windows server and any other Microsoft product that we install. This ensures that our organization has correct licenses.

When you work in corporate environment, you will often find servers that are not connected to internet for security reasons. Microsoft provides us more than one option to activate our product. We have discussed about these activation methods in our previous post. You can read that by clicking on hyperlink.

In this post we will discuss, how to do manual activation of our operating system. This may be for new OS install or for applying ESU (Extended Security Update) License. But before we do this you must make sure that MAK key has been pushed on servers that need manual activation.

Below are the steps that you can follow to activate your Microsoft product manually.

(1) First make sure that you have the activation ID available. An activation ID would be upt o 25 digits like the one shown below. This is just for your reference and not an actual activation Id. So don’t try to use it on your system. It won’t work 🙂

6H2XY-0ABCD-EFG5H-IJKL4–1MNOP9

(2) Next go to command prompt or powershell and run below command.

cscript C:\Windows\System32\slmgr.vbs /dlv >> C:\Temp\lic.txt

(3) This command will send the output in a file “lic.txt” in you C drive Temp directory. You can change the directory name. Once you have this output, open the lic.txt file. It will contain installation id. It needs to be told to MS call in blocks of 6 as shown below.

Installation id:

123456789123456789123456123456123456123456123456

Split it into block of 6:

123456–789123–456789–123456–123456–123456–123456–123456

Also make sure to note down Activation ID from above command output. It will be required to activate product.

(4) Next call Microsoft on (888) 352 7140.

This is US number. You can find your country/region number on below link:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Licensing/existing-customer/activation-centers

(5) Next listen to automated message and there select option 3.

(6) Then enter installation id in touch pad of your phone when asked or tell it verbally to automated message.

(7) Once installation id is confirmed by Microsoft, a confirmation id will be given. Note it down carefully.

(8) Back in command prompt or powershell run below command:

slmgr /atp <Confirmation ID> <Activation ID>

Replace confirmation ID with the one that you received from Microsoft and enter your Activation ID that was collected in step 2.

Your Microsoft product will be activated.

(9) For validation you can run slmgr/dlv. You will get a window where you can see the license status of your machine as shown in picture below.

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Originally published at https://toptechnotes.com on February 10, 2022.