OEM Imaged Deployment and Activation

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Guest

Hi there,
We are deploying Vista in a lab environment this summer on PCs purchased
from Dell. We are planning on creating a master image and then, through BDD
or Ghost, pushing it out to the other 40 systems. Since we are getting the
PCs pre-loaded with Vista Business, will we run into problems with validation
and activation on the machines we push to?
 
PhilHo said:
Hi there,
We are deploying Vista in a lab environment this summer on PCs purchased
from Dell. We are planning on creating a master image and then, through
BDD
or Ghost, pushing it out to the other 40 systems. Since we are getting the
PCs pre-loaded with Vista Business, will we run into problems with
validation
and activation on the machines we push to?
Click to expand...

Yes - as each OEM license comes with its own product activation key.
So unless you want each machine to have to type in its own unique key at
first start up from the sticker on the device you will have problems.
 
Thanks Mike, that helps.
--
Phil H.

Mike Brannigan said:
Yes - as each OEM license comes with its own product activation key.
So unless you want each machine to have to type in its own unique key at
first start up from the sticker on the device you will have problems.
Click to expand...
 
Mike Brannigan said:
Yes - as each OEM license comes with its own product activation key.
So unless you want each machine to have to type in its own unique key
at first start up from the sticker on the device you will have
problems.
Click to expand...

There has to be another way - Dell doesn't make you enter the product
activation key, and I'd be willing to bet that they don't enter it for
you...

With XP, I remember there being a "super secret" set of activation keys
for OEMs that validated against the BIOS so that Dell and similar didn't
have to do this. As a matter of fact, I have a set of Dell XP SP2 Ghost
images that work this way that my predecessor set up. That is, I can
re-image any Dell I have in our office to the image for that particular
model and not worry about activation. And no, we are not Volume License
users. I'll bet there is a similar thing for Vista, but how you would
go about finding this out or using it I don't know. I'll be in a
similar situation in a few months when we go to deploy Vista, so if you
find the answer please post back.

Regards,

Dave
 
Dave R. said:
There has to be another way - Dell doesn't make you enter the product
activation key, and I'd be willing to bet that they don't enter it for
you...

With XP, I remember there being a "super secret" set of activation keys
for OEMs that validated against the BIOS so that Dell and similar didn't
have to do this. As a matter of fact, I have a set of Dell XP SP2 Ghost
images that work this way that my predecessor set up. That is, I can
re-image any Dell I have in our office to the image for that particular
model and not worry about activation. And no, we are not Volume License
users. I'll bet there is a similar thing for Vista, but how you would go
about finding this out or using it I don't know. I'll be in a similar
situation in a few months when we go to deploy Vista, so if you find the
answer please post back.

Regards,

Dave
Click to expand...

Royalty OEMs may ship PCs in a number of ways - such as installed but
requiring you to enter the key on first boot, or (although I have not seen
many) pre activated against the BIOS or potentially pre activated using the
OEM factory keys -(*again less common these days)
So the original poster may have issues depending on the particular
activation scheme Dell have used on those PCs.
If the machines are BIOS locked and self activate that way then no issue -
any other way and they will have to enter the keys to activate each machine
(as they may not use the original OEM internal key)
 
the Dell installation media is "BIOS Locked" as you say, if the BIOS
validates the install you should not have an issue. As long as 1. the BIOS is
valid for Vista (The system will have a COA attached to it) 2. The harddrive
is not moved to a non-Dell system.

No guarantees, but it should work
 
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