reason

Well, I can't remember everything...

Tuesday 30 July 2013

Change Server 2012 or Windows 8 Product Key

From the Start Screen (Modern UI) type

slui.exe 0x3

and press return

A new window should open allowing you to enter a Product Key

Monday 29 July 2013

Office 2010 SP2 activation fails with error 0x80070190

I have an Office 2010 deployment with SP2 updates copied into the Updates folder.

On a new install, if the Activation Wizard appeared, it would not activate, giving an error

An unspecified error has occurred. Your request cannot be processed at this time. Please try again later. (0x80070190)

It seems the activation wizard is no longer automatically UAC prompting for elevated permissions.

To work around this, there are two options:

Using the Administrative Command Prompt, navigate to

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14
 

or

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14 

Then run

cscript ospp.vbs /act

The software activated using the MAK already provided by the Office Customisation Tool

Alternatively, if you navigate to where Office is installed and right click on an Office program and Run As Administrator eg. EXCEL, POWERPNT, WINWORD

Then GUI activation will succeed

If you are using Windows 7, you can press the Start button on your keyboard and type Word

Microsoft Word 2010 should appear at the top. Then hold down Ctrl & Shift keys, and press return. This will also launch the program as an administrator

The same also applies to Visio and Project. No Office product will activate unless performed from an administrative command prompt or explicitly running the program as Administrator

Wednesday 10 July 2013

How to tell if you are UEFI booting into Windows

Open an administrative command prompt and type

bcdedit /enum

You should get something similar to this:

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {bootmgr}
device                  partition=G:
path                    \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {globalsettings}
default                 {current}
resumeobject            {c60ccebc-b3b0-11e2-a58b-f01faf015989}
displayorder            {current}
toolsdisplayorder       {memdiag}
timeout                 30

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \WINDOWS\system32\winload.efi
description             Windows 8.1 Preview
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence        {c60ccebe-b3b0-11e2-a58b-f01faf015989}
recoveryenabled         Yes
isolatedcontext         Yes
allowedinmemorysettings 0x15000075
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \WINDOWS
resumeobject            {c60ccebc-b3b0-11e2-a58b-f01faf015989}
nx                      OptIn
bootmenupolicy          Standard


Look for the path variable.

If it ends in .efi - you are UEFI booting
It will end in .exe if you are booting in the older way