I have a similar problem that is killing me. In my case, it's not that I can't activate, but purely the fact that sysprep /generalize can only be run 3 times. In fact, I can't believe that anybody that maintains their own images isn't being killed by this.
In order to be able to load the same single image on any computer, I need to use Sysprep /generalize to reset activation so the period starts at 30 days from when the image is loaded on a computer.
I update the image with new software (our own software we preinstall on the images) every 2 months. The most efficient way to do this is to load the previous image, update it, run sysprep /generalize again and then save the updated image. But as is now, Microsoft is saying I can only update this image 3 times.
What Microsoft is telling me is that every time I need to update an image I basically have to reinstall Windows fresh and reinstall and update all my software from scratch. That's a huge amount extra work and is unacceptable.
In a lab environment where I need to reimage the same PC's over and over, I could also create an already activated image for every PC, but then I have to udpate each image independently. If I have 10 PC's in the lab that's 10 times the work, and 10 times the disk space storage for storing the images. Again, unacceptable.
There HAS to be a way to deal with this.
