Activate a User Account

[The AD RMS SDK leveraging functionality exposed by the client in Msdrm.dll is available for use in Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7, Windows Server 2012, and Windows 8. It may be altered or unavailable in subsequent versions. Instead, use Active Directory Rights Management Services SDK 2.1, which leverages functionality exposed by the client in Msipc.dll.]

Activating a user creates a rights account certificate (RAC) that identifies the user account by signing it into an Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS) Pre-production (or Production) hierarchy.

The RAC is tied to the machine certificate of a specific computer. That is, the AD RMS activation service that creates the RAC uses the public key in the machine certificate to sign the private key in the RAC. You must therefore activate the computer before activating a user. For more information, see Activate the Development Computer.

A RAC is used, along with an issuance license, to retrieve an end-user license that enables the user to consume protected content. A user can have more than one RAC on a computer, one for each AD RMS service against which the user is activated, but the user cannot transfer a RAC between computers. The user account must exist in Active Directory. You can activate the account by running the UserActivation sample included with the SDK or by writing a program that calls the DRMActivate function.

Machine Certificates

Rights Account Certificates

Setting Up the Pre-production Development Environment