Migrate a MAK Windows key to KMS

Migrate a MAK Windows key to KMS

This is meant to be a very quick guide to show how to migrate from a MAK Volume License key to a KMS activated Volume License Key. This is sometimes necessary within a big company where sometimes, in order to quickly test a new product, a MAK key is used. For instance, quite a few people had to do this for Windows 10, especially because earlier versions of Windows running as the KMS server weren’t supporting yet the new OS.

The procedure is very simple. You will need:

  • The volume license key to be retrieved from Volume Licensing Service Center.
  • Admin rights on the machine you’re going to migrate from MAK to KMS.
  • Run Slmgr.vbs /dlv before and after the procedure (take a screenshot of the output) to see the differences.

Let’s start:

  1. Open a command prompt with elevated rights (Run as administrator or Run as a different user and sign in with the admin account).
  2. Run
    %windir%\system32\slmgr.vbs /ipk MYKEY-MYKEY-MYKEY-MYKEY-MYKEY
    

    Obviously, replace MYKEY-MYKEY-MYKEY-MYKEY-MYKEY with the key you’ve retrieved from the Volume Licensing Service Center.

  3. Run
    %windir%\system32\slmgr.vbs /ato

    Note that this might fail with an error telling you that an activation is already in progress. If that’s the case, wait a few minutes.

  4. You are done. You may run Slmgr.vbs /dlv in order to check that all is in order. You’re goin gto be able to see that Windows is now activated with the VOLUME_KMS key.

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