Office 2013 KMS issue

opethdisciple

opethdisciple

opethdisciple

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I've prepared the KMS server. (Pretty sure all is well. Status of Office 2013 is licensed)

I've prepared the 2013 package which install unattended on client machines.

I've verified that the KMS client is picking up the right srv record from DNS server.

Other Microsoft products are showing up in Key Management log on KMS host.

Issue I have is activation attempts from KMS client for Office 2013 are not showing up on KMS host at all.

0 attempts and nothing in logs.

Any ideas?

edit*

I know there is an activation threshold of 5 (I think), however Microsoft surely haven't made it seem invisible until you reach 5 unique attempts? :confused:

Nothing going on in the logs. 0 activation attempts from any machine.

Windows firewall also turned off.
 
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Definitely not retail. ISO was downloaded form our volume license site.

Manager seems to think that product key could be wrong. Not I'm not sure about that either. It's KMS key. He suggested putting it in to Office 2013 and seeing what it had to say.

All it says is that this isnt a Office 2013 key. I may have entered a key for another version of office.....

Again its a KMS key... I'm not expecting it to work through Office 2013.

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However even if the key was wrong surely I would see an activation attempt in the logs in the KMS host?
 
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Have I missed something out on the kms server itself?

I configured this in Dec 2015, but off the top of my head, I downloaded the license pack from Volume license centre, I remember calling them up to get kms key. All installed and Office 2015 says 'licensed' on kms.

Still there is no attempts by any clients on the kms host.

Have they changed the way the dns works? As far a I can see they haven't, but it's the only thing I can think of.

When I try a manual activation on the client form the cmd I get error 0x8000FFFF - catastrophic failure.
 
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On the Office client you don't put the KMS key, and you don't put a MAK key. You put the GENERIC Microsoft Volume Activation key, which comes embedded in the VL Office ISO. So if you haven't got the correct ISO, you won't have the correct key embedded.

These are the generic keys:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/dn385360.aspx

As soon as you put that key in (assuming you have the correct version of Office in the first place), you should start seeing activation requests in the KMS log.

To recap: if you use the correct ISO, it just works out of the box.
 
rotor said:
On the Office client you don't put the KMS key, and you don't put a MAK key. You put the GENERIC Microsoft Volume Activation key, which comes embedded in the VL Office ISO. So if you haven't got the correct ISO, you won't have the correct key embedded.

These are the generic keys:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/dn385360.aspx

As soon as you put that key in (assuming you have the correct version of Office in the first place), you should start seeing activation requests in the KMS log.

To recap: if you use the correct ISO, it just works out of the box.
Click to expand...

Thanks for feedback.

Yes. What you've put above I am aware of. I told my manager we didn't need to put a GVLK key in to the msp file, but as it wasn't working previously I thought what the heck.

The key we used was a GVLK key in the msp file. Still 0 activity on the kms server.

Thing is dns is working and we can see requests for other things coming in, but nothing is happening for Office 2013.

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Bit messy at the moment as current deployment of Office 2013 on a small subsection of machines, we have pushed it out with the GVLK key specified in the MAK field of the msp file. Which isn't necessary, but manager seems to think it doesn't hurt.

If it was me, I would try undoing what I've done and pushing it out again minus the GVLK key.

But we tried that first time round and it still didn't work.

There is something missing. As of right now there is zero communication between the office 2013 clients and the server.
 
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nslookup -type=srv _vlmcs._tcp from a kms client brings back the correct result.

nslookup -type=srv _vlmcs._tcp from the kms host fails.

Not sure if this is significant or not.

A. Other services are working. KMS activation for Windows and Office 2010 for example.

B. Its the client that needs to find the host not the other way round, so maybe the fact the host cannot locate the srv record for it's self is insignificant.

But it's the only thing I have been able to find that stands out.
 
nslookup from the KMS host failing simply means you haven't got a domain suffix configured (nslookup tries all the locally configured domain suffixes). Try this:

nslookup -type=srv _vlmcs._tcp.youdomain.local.

(notice the . on the end -- this tells it to ignore suffixes)

Troubleshoot this from one of the client PCs. There should be tonnes of stuff about what it's trying to do in the local log files.
 
DNS on host is now sorted. But issue still persists.

The kms server shows office 2013 as licensed. I set this up in 2015 so cant remember everything now, but I'm presuming I've done it correctly otherwise it wouldnt show up as licensed.

I remember downloading the license pack, and calling microsoft for a kms key.

That went in and it shows as licenced on the kms server. Do I have to do anything else?

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I've done something wrong as it doesnt work! No events at all for office 2013 on the KMS server.

Are there any patches I've missed? It's a server 2008 r2 machine.

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I've had a look through the patches and updates for server 2008 and nothing really needed as far as I can see.

We are running SP1 and there is a SP2 avialable. But not sure if neccessary.
 
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This is still not working.

We have tried using wire shark to see what is happening on the network and it doesn't appear that that client is even making any network connections to the server at all.

I'm tempted to open up a Technet support case.
 
Believe it or not this is one step away from being escalated to the developers at Microsoft.

So far Microsoft support are completely stumped!! Only a handful of issues get escalated to the developers a year.

They have spent the last 5 weeks trying to work out why Office 2013 running on Win7 in our network, just will not activate over KMS.
 
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