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ABR is not meant to work with Retail versions, so you are seeing the expected behavior. As you have found, Trueimage is a good method to backup as whole Vista install without dealing with activation.

Thanks glentium. Also, there have been newer versions of ABR released since what is in the OP. Anyone who follows that link will get a file that contains nothing but a message that the link is out of date.

No, it only works with OEM editions that are pre-installed by the OEM. If you have a retail version, you should be able to activate online without having to make the phone call.

Glad to hear that it's working for you. I think you've put together something really cool.

I would guess that if you don't have network access at that point, then none of the proposed methods above would work, including if there was a way to tell activation_restore where to look for the files?

That's a good idea and i'll add it to the todo list, though I probably won't be able to add it soon. A good way to workaround this in your batch file could be: set OLDDIR=%CD% cd //server/activation/labpc01 activation_restore.exe --silent cd "%OLDDIR%" I'm not sure if you can 'cd' into a network path though. Otherwise you could make a temp dir and then copy the files into it.

You can back up each system by hand, then use the --silent option when doing the restore int the script. It's mentioned in the README. You'll need to make sure the correct license files are in the directory before restoring. This thread links to an out of date version of ABR. Get the the most recent version my (official) site: http://directedge.us/content/abr-activatio...kup-and-restore

I don't know of a reason it would not work, but I don't have any experience with versions other than the standard US/English version. You can run the backup, then check the 2 created files. If they have something in them, then it worked.

Not currently. I have an idea about it, but no time to implement ATM.

Office goes back to the CD because it has to get the original dll files and such when applying the patch. It doesn't check codes. There is nothing on the CD specific to your key code, because there's no way they could mass produce each CD with a different code on it.