View Composer error due to failure Windows activation

I’ve been playing around with VMware View in my lab environment testing different scenarios with the View Composer. Today I noticed that a deployment with linked clones failed with the following error:

View Composer agent initialization state error (16): Failed to activate the software license (waited 0 seconds)

When I looked into the log files I noticed that during the linked clone deployment the View Composer tried to activate the Windows 7 software. This lab environment doesn’t have a internet connection so Windows was unable to activate. Normally you would setup a KMS server for Linked Clones but this is a little bit overkill for my lab.

Searching the internet I found the following kb article form VMware saying that they have a workaround for the issue, but you have to contact VMware technical support to get the solution. Searching a little bit further I found the solution. You have to adjust to registry keys telling the View Composer not to activate Windows during a deployment.

You can find the key’s at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesvmware-viewcomposer-ga

There you find to key’s

• AllowActivateMAKLicense
• SkipLicenseActivation

Default both set to 0. Adjust the value to 1 and your done.

Note: This isn’t supported by VMware or Microsoft and only should be used in a lab environment.

vExpert 2014

I’m honored to announce that this year for the 4th time I’m awarded with the vExpert 2014 title.

vExpert is title who you can ear for a year if you have demonstrated significant contribution to the community and a willingness to share their expertise with others.

I’ve got mine for my grey VMware courses that I’ve developed and of course this blog

The complete list of all vExpert 2014 can be found here.