I have a machine that I'm migrating from physical hardware to a VMWare server. It is Windows 2003 and the license key fell off the machine and is gone. I know when I start up the virtualized version of that machine, it will ask me to Activate. I know this because it did that for other machine I migrated. For that machine I have the key because the sticker is still on it.

So how can I get the activation key from the OS? Or am I stuck having to call Microsoft or Dell to get an new key?

4 Answers

A quick Google finds this article that may help. I haven't tried it personally.

If your product key is from the COA attached to the server, it's likely to be an OEM product key and thus not generally transferable. In that case, it won't work for activating your virtual server.

I don't know the details of Windows Server 2003 licensing, however, for Windows Server 2008, I'm pretty sure that virtual guests are not considered the same machine as the host, for licensing purposes.

I just used CD Key Reader and it seemed to work ok.

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