Can someone please explain the correct activation and rules for the VM's. With the standard edition you can not use AVMA, supposedly you use the same OEM key you activated on the host. When I try to use the key I got the 0xC004FD03 error. I used telephone activation for the 1st VM. When I activated the Host I answered 1 computer, apparently you answer 0 for the first activation, 1 for the second (VM1) and 2 for the third (VM3). When I use 2 I get the error. BTW I did try the AVMA keys first before I tried the OEM key. My OEM is useless and keeps telling me to use AVMA but I do not have the datacenter version of windows server 2016 to use as the virtulization server. It seems that this problem is very common and Microsoft should clarify how to fix it! I have seen some vage info that the OEM should supply keys or authorize guests but I have not been able to get this done.
Thanks in advance for any help.