Well, it "could" have been a phone activation. I can try the change key window. Do you mean from slmgr or just change product key from the activation screen in windows update? My other system does show a DL. I did not know a key would expire!
I've done a few phone activations, the PC generates one code, and the automated reply gives you another to type in. It's been a while since I did one but install id and confirmation id sound like those two codes, that's why I asked.
MAK keys are Multiple Activation Keys, but they have a limit on how many times they can be used to activate. I have yet to hit the limit on mine, I've only ever used a MAK 3 or 4 times. Maybe 6 times max. Best I can tell my keys are good for 10 maybe 20 activations. Microsoft doesn't really say. Mine are from my My Visual Studio subscription, what used to be MSDN.
One thing I've done when one fails to activate is run slmgr.vbs /ato from an admin command prompt.
The MAKs were always Concurrent activations rather than Total activations, this is also the way that Microsoft operates with single activation retail keys and things such as family keys for Office etc
That's the way I've always understood it to be - Which does make sense, assuming that a MAK is actually a set number of Retail licences, as this is the way that the rest of the VL system has worked
You purchase a server licence and a number of seat licences, this was always in two parts you had to licence the server to serve a set number of devices and each device had to be licensed to use the server and also run without the server, but may have been simplified in recent times down to one layer, if you had 100 licences, logging into the server would fail for the 101st device,
You could have 200 or 2000 actual devices licenced for individual use any 100 of which could access the server concurrently A MAK is just a special VL licence for long term use, (greater than the KMS refresh setting), Licencing can get quite complex in some large multinationals with multiple sites and servers - Those where the network tree is part of a forest
Thanks Barman. Thankfully I never had to deal with that type of stuff. I was never in IT or anything close to it. I can remember the guy responsible getting a headache when licenses were audited to make sure we were licensed for what we were using. Not a Microsoft audit just an internal company audit.
It does become fun when dealing with thousands of licences across multiple sites, in different countries,
It often takes a dedicated server just to run the KMS, they need to be centralised to best use resources across multiple time zones - it's not that efficient to have licenses "in use" in say the UK when the office is closed and need them in the US where the office is open, so individual servers in geographic locations is not the best use of resource
Check your remaining activation count with the app I posted here: Activation troubleshooting - Page 17 - Windows 10 Forums
If there is none left it won't activate online (if it had not before) - phone activation only may work in such instances.
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