As confusing as that sounds, what it really means is that any operating system with a newer operating system can usually activate lower operating systems. There’s actually information on what servers and desktop operating systems can activate which server or desktops. In the example above, we have a server that’s activate with a MAK key. What we’re interested in from the output is whether you see: … a prompt similar to the following will show information similar to the following: To determine what key your server has been activated with, simply open up the command prompt and execute the following command:
Note that there are various reasons why this error would be thrown but in this situation, the reason why this error is thrown is because if you are to use a Windows Server 2008 R2 server as your KMS server, you need to install and activate the server with a KMS key and not a MAK key.
You must either run Windows Server 2008 R2 Setup or enter a Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Product key. This product key you have entered will not work with this edition of Windows Server 2008 R2. If you try to use this Windows 7 KMS key to activate the Windows 2008 R2 server itself, you’ll get the following error: The Software Licensing Service reported that the license is not installed. On a computer running Microsoft Windows non-core edition, run ‘slui.exe 0x2a 0xC004F015’ to display the error text.Įxecuting slui.exe 0x2a 0xc004f015 displays the following error message: You attempt to install a Windows 7 KMS key on a Windows 2008 R2 server but receive the following error: