Automatic Activation of Office 2010

If you're using a MAK key for Office 2010, you'll have the problem where after Office is installed on a machine the first user who uses it will be prompted to activate online. To prevent this from happening do the following.

In the custom MSP file, go to the "Add installations and run programs section", then click Add. In the "Target" field put in "[SystemFolder]\cscript.exe" (without the quotes) and then in the Arguments field put in "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\ospp.vbs" /act (quotes included) Make sure you have "Run this program after the Office product has been installed" checked and you're good to go.

Automatic Activation of Windows 7/Server 2008

The following will automatically active a Windows 7 / Server 2008 OS during the imaging process.

Create a Run Command Line task and run "SLMGR.VBS -ato" from the %systemroot%\system32 directory.

As long as the OS is configured to use a valid product key and has a connection to the Internet or KMS server, it will successfully activate.

Disable UAC in Windows Vista, Windows 7, Server 2008, and Server 2008 R2

Here's a registry key you can import during your task sequence that will disable the UAC in the latest version of Windows and Server.

In your task sequence insert a command line task. For the command line put in "regedit /S uac.reg", then set the start in directory to a drive that you've already mapped that has the UAC registry key in it. Place a reboot task directly after the UAC registry key is imported and after a reboot the UAC will be disalbed.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
"EnableLUA"=dword:00000000

Deploying Server 2008 R2 Std via SCCM

I was asked to create a deployment for Server 2008 R2 today. I figured it would be easy as hell, however that wasn't the case. The task sequence kept throwing an error on the "Setup Windows and ConfigMgr task. Ends up it was due to the product key. After messing around with the TS over and over again, I found that if I removed the product key the TS would finish successfully. I ended up finding out that the copy of Server 2008 R2 that I got off my companies licensing site doesn't allow for a MAK key to be entered during setup. After some more searching online however I found a way to input the MAK key another way so that when the OS went to automatically activate itself it wouldn't throw an error.

What you need to do is add a Run Command Line task to your TS that comes after the OS is already installed. Put in the command line "SLMGR.VBS -ipk XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX" and then tell it to start in %system root%\system32.

By doing that you're specifying a product key to be used during automatic activation.