I backup some of my windows servers about 3 times a day because of the large amount of data that changes on it.
I had a hardware failure that killed one of my machines, and now I have a problem. I can restore that server to a virtual machine no problem, using Acronis, and get it booting up, but it asked me to activate it. I click to activate online, yet it fails. I have the key, and it's a valid windows instance, but I fear I will not be able to get this system back online anytime soon. Microsoft are being no help either.
Is it possible to change the key to a VLK that we have, that we just didn't use on this server, because it came with windows 2003 on it already?
Best Answer
The only way I know of to change the product key from OEM to VLK is to do a repair install. This is a risky thing to do on a production server though and I don't recommend it. I have had success in the past running a repair install from volume license media and then using a volume license key.