I am a network engineer and for a over 20 days we had an issue where we could NOT get Windows to Activate. We had this issue for nearly a month and the trial Activation period of 30-days nearly expired. I tried to run slmgr.vbs -aco tried -dli switch to pull up the activation information, also tried the standard activation wizard too no avail. We got access denied error messages. We FINALLY found the answer.
Windows activation is actually tied to the “Plug and play” service and you need to give the system account called “Service” access to this service (we gave it full-control permissions). Once done we were able to Activate windows and do all the licensing goodness.
How did we do this you say..
Launched MMC and added the “Security Templates” and the “Security Configuration and Analysis” plugin. Created a new template (blanked out options) using the Templates plugin. Using the other plugin opened a new Database (named it Activation fix) and imported the new template created earlier. Analyzed the computer to bring up the security options then configured the “Plug and Play” service permissions by adding the local “Service” account and giving it full-control perms. Then configured the computer (another right-click option is Security Configuration and Analysis), this will apply the changes. Close everything and choose whether you want to save the MMC setup (doesn’t matter).
Once done, you can now activate the system…BAMM 🙂
