Marc Charbonneau’s Blog

Windows Vista activation DNS bug (error 0×8007232b)

March 15th, 2007 by Marc Charbonneau

One of the nice things about having a Software Assurance subscription at work is that I have access to Windows Vista Enterprise, which comes with all sorts of goodies and can be downloaded straight from microsoft.com. Now, the way volume licensing is handled is completely different than it was in Windows XP, so I was a little concerned when I tried to activate Vista today and it complained about a DNS error, 0×8007232b.

After reading this thread, I found the solution. Right click on My Computer, select Properties, and click on Change product key at the bottom of the window. You’re then prompted to enter your key (I’m using MAK, but I assume KMS would work the same way), and Vista should connect to the internet and validate the key without any errors.

It’s a weird bug, and it seems like a lot of customers are running into it; not the type of thing I would expect to slip by QA. I hope it’s resolved by the time I start rolling out Vista to our users.

Tags: 9 Comments

9 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Robert Jun 18, 2007 at 7:20 pm

    Marc,

    Thanks alot. I was scratching my head about this one.

    Robert

  • 2 Paul Jul 5, 2007 at 11:16 am

    Thanks for that, MS need to get this solved, just a pain you can use KMS but you have to tie up a vista machine to do it and you have to have a minimum of 25 vista machines, thankfully I haven’t got that many yet, wish someone could tell me who thought to change everything, that used to be easy to find and hide it away making you look twice a hard, it wont go down well with staff.

  • 3 Terry Jul 11, 2007 at 8:50 am

    I appreciate the heads-up. I experienced this same issue on Vista Enterprise and used the suggested fix. It worked!

  • 4 Ethan Oct 12, 2007 at 9:46 pm

    Thanks! This is just what I needed. It would be nice if Vista help & support would provide this type of resolution so that we don’t have to go searching for gems like this. Thanks again.

  • 5 Henrik Pedersen Feb 24, 2008 at 9:06 am

    It’s the same problem with Windows Server 2008.

  • 6 John Mar 13, 2008 at 8:45 am

    Same issue with Server 2008, but I know why - I upgraded from RC1 to the RTM and it never asked me to re-enter a valid product key. I’m sure the RC1 product key was bouncing against the Activation service and getting rejected, but instead of a valid error message, “DNS entry could not be found??” Of course since it should be impossible to install software with a bad key, maybe they forgot to put meaningful error messages in the Activation service.

  • 7 khafagiagi@gmail.com Apr 26, 2008 at 5:37 am

    Thanks you help me in my problem, this way save my time , I will in featur help people in same way by post my experience

  • 8 bean2thousand Jun 2, 2008 at 9:42 pm

    Thanks a lot for the great tip. I find that running the scripts to change product keys do not work all the time.

  • 9 kiran solanki Aug 26, 2008 at 2:35 pm

    Thanks Alot, ive been wondering why this has not been working - such a simple solution for a silly bug. Worked on windows 2008.