Friday, August 01, 2008 1:46 PM
For the past few months, I’ve had a little bubble pop up from my taskbar saying “Hey, your copy of Windows can’t be activated!” and to each of these I would respond…well, I wouldn’t…I just ignored it. Figured it was an issue with the Microsoft activation servers and eventually activation would occur.
Not so much.
Instead, I was greeted this morning with a message that my copy of Windows was not authentic, and it would just sit with a black screen, a cursor, and the forementioned message in the bottom corner.
At first I freaked thinking I had lost all my stuff, but I eventually just let the computer be on the black screen until the activation wizard magically appeared.
I tried to activate, but to no avail. I rebooted the machine and went off to grab some food. When I came back, the activation wizard had defaulted to another option which loads up Windows but warns you that you may have been the victim of pirating *gasp*.
So at this stage I try to activate again…and again I’m not able to. But this time at least I get an error detail: Code 0x8007232B – DNS name does not exist. Interesting…
A few quick Googles of the error message shows that this has been an issue with versions of Vista for a while now. The solution, as weird as it is, is to right click your computer, go properties, then select the link to “Change your Windows key.” But you don’t…you re-enter the one you originally used. Voila! Your activation will now go through without a hitch.
D