AWS and Windows Activation

August 29, 2024

Quick one today where I was on a client server hosted in AWS that wasn’t activated.

Trying to activate it via Settings App throws and error. Like most large scale cloud vendors (except Azure), AWS use KMS to activate their windows machines, however sometimes the servers need some help to reach the internal KMS servers at Amazon – especially so when using your own DNS servers.

Open an administrative PowerShell console and enter the following commands

Import-Module "C:\\ProgramData\\Amazon\\EC2-Windows\\Launch\\Module\\Ec2Launch.psd1"
Add-Routes
Set-ActivationSettings

Then perform an activate online command as per a normal KMS activation (or you can wait…)

slmgr /ato

And that should get it activated and the watermark removed.

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