I don't know if this will help your situation, but I can say that I saw exactly what you were describing, and if you enter the key during the actual install, it appears to work. I have not gotten around to trying the in-place upgrade yet. Just as an FYI, based on the earlier response, the 2 machines I was seeing this issue on, were not upgrades, they were brand new installs on a blank hard drive. Open the Powershell console as administrator and type in Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned Next type in Import-Module C:\sers\\username\\desktop\\key.ps1 Get-WindowsKey We have actived Windows server 2012 standard.We are planing to format it, Is any tool or command is available to know its CD or product key so that we can active it again. In this box, enter the following command: cscript.
To modify it, open the Run dialogue box by pressing the Windows key on your keyboard + R. I didn't bother running a wireshark or anything to see what kind of response I was getting when trying to activate from Settings. When your operating system is in trial mode, a default product key is installed.
#Find server 2012 standard product key install
if I were to guess, they made something in the install to take into account these testing keys, but the Activation function within Settings, has not been updated to reflect that, so it thinks you are activating a live version of Windows, and that is not a valid key there. I wiped them out and this time entered the key during install, and it successfully activated. I ran into the same issue on 2 of my 2019 servers.
Did you install, choose NOT to enter the product key, then after the install was done, try to enter and activate the key? if so, that does not appear to work. Now we have decided to upgrade to Business Intelligence edition but we actually do not have any product keys because the MSDN subcription only provides an ISO with a pre-registered key. If the above fails, you can also try the other evaluation product keys available below: Operating System.