When working with Machine Creation Services we discovered that the Clients all have the same CMID. A different CMID is needed to activate using KMS services. We searched for a solution and everyone mentioned rearming the machine, but then we received the message that we can’t rearm. We then searched for a solution but everyone was pointing out to set the Skiprearm to 1. When testing this we discovered that the CMID keeps the same after rearming the Windows machine.
We discovered that the “Remaining Windows Rearm Count” was 0. which means that when you set SkipRearm then you don’t rearm the machine. Knowing this we searched how to reset the Rearm count and found an article that explained how we could reset the rearm count. http://www.daniel-mitchell.com/blog/reset-windows-7-rearm-count/
To do this follow the below instructions:
- Create reset.bat on C:\
- add the following code:
reg load HKLM\MY_SYSTEM “%~dp0Windows\System32\config\system”
reg delete HKLM\MY_SYSTEM\WPA /f
reg unload HKLM\MY_SYSTEM - Restart your machine to repair mode using the F8 key.
- In the System Recovery Options menu, select Command Prompt.
- Now type in D:\reset.bat. The C-drive is used as a recovery partition.
- If the script is executed successfully, you should get the message “The operation completed successfully”.
- Reboot your machine.
Now the rearm count is reset to 5. You can check this using slmgr /dlv.
Now set make sure the Skiprearm is set to 0 at the following location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\SoftwareProtectionPlatform
Now the Image is ready to deploy and the KMS server will receive different CMID’s from the servers.