Recently my company fielded nine new servers to our customer in Houston, TX.  All nine of the servers have Windows 2012 R2 installed.  Of the nine servers, only one of the servers fails to activate.  The customer has sent me a photo of the key attached to this specific server.  How can I help the customer to resolve this issue?

 

You need to look at the event log to know why it can't activate.

Does the computer have access to the internet ?
Was the client using MAK and ran out of activation?
Can the computer reach the KMS server?

Most of the time the event log will tell why.

any error log on the event log?

Moreover, you should refer to the following link, which has similar issue

http://serverfault.com/questions/592920/windows-server-2012-r2-standard-activation-issue-mak-license

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/921471

roger

• Edited by System Center guy a few seconds ago

any error log on the event log?

Moreover, you should refer to the following link, which has similar issue

http://serverfault.com/questions/592920/windows-server-2012-r2-standard-activation-issue-mak-license

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/921471

roger

• Edited by System Center guy Tuesday, September 01, 2015 6:59 AM

Hi Ron,

If the server has Internet access, we could activate online.

Here are the steps:

• Open PC settings.
• Click Activate Windows.
• Click Activate to activate online. We could also enter a new product key or check the error. 

Best Regards,

Leo