I’ve been setting up our first production Windows Server 2008 (x64 naturally!) domain controller and I had some issues with the activation. The first problem I had was the the OS wanted activation almost immediately. I had no GUI to do anything other than activate or log out. Bummer! This caused me two issues: one was that I wasn’t sure of my network settings so I needed access to some controls (GUI or CMD would do) to change those and then .. well, you’ll see in a minute.
There’s a workaround 🙂 Click the button to purchase a new license key online. That opens IE. Cancel it from going anywhere. Type "C:" in the address bar. That opens a new window for Windows Explorer. From here we can click on Control Panel to make changes or fire up command prompt from the C:WindowsSystem32 folder. Sneaky!
OK, now I was sure I had a valid network configuration. I could even navigate the net using IE (not recommended on a server) but it’s a test of Internet connectivity.
Now when I tried to activate I got this:
ERROR: A problem occurred when Windows tried to activate. Error Code 0x80072328.
The problem here was that fat-fingers here had somehow screwed up the product key. Use the above workaround to get into Control Panel. Now open up System. At the bottom you’ll see a link to change your product key. Enter the correct and valid product key for this server. You can now activate if everything is correct.
This should work for Vista as well.