Verifying Microsoft Installation Media
A question that has come to me several times has been how to verify if an specific installation is running a time limited evaluation copy or full blown copy. Many Microsoft products can now be downloaded and installed as evaluations and you usually can't tell the product apart at all until one day it stops to function.
The same is true for System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 (SCMDM 2008). From the Console if you select Help->About you can retrieve the Product ID for the installed product. The first 5 digits is called the Microsoft Product Code, "MPC" and identifies the product that has been installed.
This is what SCMDM 2008 RTM looks like using Volume License (VL) bits:
This is what SCMDM 2008 SP1 looks like using Volume License (VL) bits:
Please notice the Product ID field and the second grouping of 3 digits. These are the Channel ID for the media, or "CID". Using the listing on http://wiki.lunarsoft.net/wiki/Product_IDs, it shows that the second 3 digits “270” are indeed Volume Licensed bits..
If you download the SCMDM 2008 SP1 120-day TechNet evaluation copy from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/cc339027.aspx, the Help->About screen looks like this:
Notice that the second 3 digit grouping in the Product ID field, the Channel ID, is "849" in this case, not "270". It appears that the some of the Channel ID numbers vary from product family to product family, so I was unable to get information on what the "849" is representative of at this point in time.. If you have more details please comment!
This article explains the details of the Product ID and various media channels on the Windows 2003 Server OS side: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=889713. perhaps not directly reverent for SCMDM, but shows more of the complexity behind the media and versions out there for other product families..
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