Create, install and deploy a KMS server

Dec 20, 2006 10:21 GMT  ·  By

Building your very own Key Management Service for the activation of business editions of Windows Vista is actually a very simple task. You were able to read right here on Softpedia reports about the existence of KMS activation servers in the wild delivering an alternative method to activate Windows Vista Enterprise and Business editions.

Microsoft has overhauled the volume license key (VLK) activation process for Vista Business and Enterprise editions in an effort to put an end to pirated copies of the Windows operating system activated via VLK. In this regard, the Redmond company has introduced the KMS (Key Management Service) activation server as a new feature to the Vista Volume Activation 2.0. Via a KMS server, organizations are able to centralize the management of Vista volume license keys as each copy of the operating system has to be activated. A single KMS server enables the management activation of local Vista machines.

Although the method of building a KMS server is legitimate, due to that fact that it can be used in order to spoof a genuine, Microsoft KMS activation server in order to activate pirated versions of Windows Vista Business and Enterprise, I will only present the creation process for purely informative purposes and I will not complete the guide in order to prevent the creation of fully functional pseudo KMS servers.

In order to create, install and deploy a KMS server, you must first of all set up a virtual machine on your system. VMWare Server or Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 will both work. Following the installation of the virtual machine you only need to run a few command prompts with elevated privileges in order to obtain a spoofed KMS server. For the reasons mentioned above, I will not provide you with these pieces of script.

In order for a KMS server to deliver a workaround for the activation of Vista, it requires more than 25 machines with the business version of the operating system already installed. Although spoofed KMS servers do provide an activation workaround for pirated versions of Vista Business and Enterprise, the operating system will not be validated, and according to the product key used, it will fail WGA validation.