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Change Windows from KMS client to Azure AD activation?

cn flag
Dale Mahalko

Is there a known way to change existing Windows 10/11 devices from KMS client activation to Azure AD Education A3 / A5 or Enterprise E3 / E5 license activation?

Apparently when Windows 10/11 devices are being imaged and joined to Azure AD for pure cloud management, if they can find a local KMS licensing server within your local LAN, they will automatically join to that first before attempting to license online during the Azure AD join.

Once joined to the local LAN KMS license server, these Windows client devices then apparently will not let go of the KMS activation method by themselves, and change to Azure online licensing, even if the KMS license server is disabled or blocked behind a firewall and the KMS license activation has expired.

Removing the previous onsite KMS client key and KMS DNS name from a Windows 10 device, and then rearming using slmgr.vbs, does not seem to be the correct way to change it to Azure based licensing.

Attempting to then reapply the Windows 10 Education default client setup key NW6C2-QMPVW-D7KKK-3GKT6-VCFB2 from Microsoft's Appendix A documentation, apparently makes it try to find a local KMS server again, rather than attempt to activate online through Azure AD.

Reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2012-r2-and-2012/jj612867(v=ws.11)

Something more is needed. Apparently there is no such thing as an Azure AD KMS client setup key?

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Appleoddity avatar
ng flag
Appleoddity
I think you are talking about per user licensing. Where you assign a Microsoft 365 E3/E5 license to a user. My experience is that the machine automatically enables the version licensed when the user logs in. For instance, all our machines come with Windows Pro. But, they all run as enterprise whenever a user is logged in. If a user logs in without the license, then the machine will revert to pro. These are hybrid AD joined machines so the user is logging in with an Azure AD account which activates windows.
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cn flag
Greg Askew
`Windows client devices then apparently will not let go of the KMS activation method by themselves`. Never have. Questions about licensing and billing are best handled by the vendors.
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cn flag
Dale Mahalko
This has nothing to do with legal or sales issues related licensing and billing but rather the technical details of how Windows is activated by Azure AD. The "vendors" aka Microsoft have been no help so far.
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SamErde avatar
gg flag
SamErde
It has been a few years since we made the change from KMS to Office 365 activation, but in my experience, we actually had to replace all retail, volume, or MSI-based Office installations with the Office 365 click-to-run installer in order to be able to activate. You will also need to make sure the computers have internet access, TLS 1.2 is enabled, and each user is licensed in the M365 portal ahead of time. If those conditions are all met, the Office client applications should automatically activate with Microsoft 365.
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