So we have purchased a bunch of Vostro systems with the Trend Micro Business Security Services subscriptions. We already had been using the product so it's pretty convenient to get the licenses built in.
Had no problems activating these and then migrating the OEM license into our regular retail licenses until one particular order a few months back. Those systems were ordered with 15month subscription upgrades but when the system first booted it showed up as 30day trial editions when I went to activate on all 3 systems that were shipped on the same order. I have ordered pretty much the same configuration before and since then and the packaged license has worked fine in those cases. I'm not even sure how it even known what length of license I ordered. Possibly there is some server that checks my service tags when activating to find out what length of time it should give because these are quick ship configs so it's not like there was time to reimage the hard drive prior to shipping.
I have had to activate those machines using one of our existing retail edition licenses in the meantime. So basically I'm owed 3 licenses from Dell.
I tried to contact Trend support, they referred me to Dell. I submitted a support request with Dell which has been open since April 11. I'm not especially concerned about this, it's pretty cheap software and not really worth spending a bunch of time trying to resolve in the grand scheme of things. I'm guessing that Dell is waiting for some kind of response from Trend Micro but I'll likely ask for an update on the status tomorrow.
It's kind of annoying that there doesn't appear to be any kind of activation code, receipt, or paper trail proving the systems have been activated or any way to recover the activation after the machine has done an activation attempt.
My question is has anyone else ever had a problem with not getting the packaged OEM license for a trend micro product to give the correct length of subscription?
And does anyone know how the activation process works for these packaged licenses of Trend Micro software? Is it checking some server to verify the subscription length like I suspect?
Is there any way to reset it and attempt to activate those machines again once I have already gone ahead and installed my own copy of Trend Micro Business Security Services? Or is that something you can only do when you first boot the systems out of the box?
Note: This is a Dell question because Dell is the only vendor providing the prepackaged OEM licenses on the new computers. I do not know of any other vendor who is setup to deliver the license the same way. Other vendors will use the more traditional activation code system where an activation code is printed on a piece of paper included with the machine that you can go online to register and get your additional seats, renewal, etc. No codes are ever given, just an icon on the desktop that you click on to log into trend micro and activate the license. A confirmation code is emailed to you only after the license is activated but that's not too helpful if the problem is like mine where the correct license was not there in the first place.