How To Fix Windows Activation Error 0x80072F8F Boydo's Tech Talk

How to Fix Windows Activation Error 0x80072F8F » Boydo's Tech Talk http://mingersoft.com/blog/2012/05/how-to-fix-windows-activation-err...
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2012 Microsoft, Operating Systems, Technology, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista by Boyd Chan
Like 14 people like this.
The last thing you want to see during a Windows installation is an error message and particularly one which might not give you any helpful
information on how to correct it (and not many Windows errors fall into that bucket). Anyway, this is a simple yet frustrating problem that I came
across recently and I hope the solution will help others.
After punching in your Windows serial key and proceeding with validation you may encounter an activation error with the error code
0x80072F8F. What I have found is that this is normally caused by incorrect date, time and timezone settings on the computer which may have
been overlooked as part of the prior steps in the setup despite typing in the correct serial number. Basically, you can try one of two things:
1. Go backwards through the setup to review the time, date and timezone parameters and ensure that they are correct (6PM in India is not Shutting Down Windows 10 for IoT Core http://t.co
the same as 6PM in Australia), /JfxPAFsvIL
6 months ago
2. Proceed without entering a serial number and fix up the time, date and timezone once booted into Windows (then enter in your serial
number and activate within thirty days).
Motorola Turbo Charger Review http://t.co
Microsoft seems to want to enforce correct times and dates with its serial key validations thus the errors being thrown when a validating /9SmWOQinCc
computer is outside of the tolerated window (presumably with settings ahead or behind the extremes of the UTC timezones). At any rate, this is 6 months ago
simple enough to fix and put behind you!

Like 14 people like this. How to Autoplay Videos Upon Boot on Kodi http://t.co
Like 14 /hvDQD71FPP
6 months ago
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sss
June 5, 2012 at 12:14 (UTC 11) Reply
finaly it solved in simple step… change the time to some old date, and try to activate it will wokr
Max
September 23, 2014 at 12:54 (UTC 11) Reply
so simple i feel stupid right now thks !!!! Be the first of your friends to like this
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Laszlo link.
June 5, 2012 at 17:56 (UTC 11) Reply October 28 at 1:15am
Worked for me too. Set the date back a day and presto!
Wesley
June 5, 2012 at 23:22 (UTC 11) Reply
I’m having the same problem but my date and time are correct – even set up to update automatically. Is there anything else that can cause this
error?
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Boyd Chan
June 6, 2012 at 07:56 (UTC 11) Reply
Boydo's Tech Talk shared a
Did you also check that you have the right timezone set in addition to the date and time?
May 2012
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wild
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Thanks
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FIXME
October 19, 2012 at 16:02 (UTC 11) Reply
1 of 7 11/5/2015 3:59 PM
I know I am a little late but I want to add something. If all the avobe did not fix the problem make sure that that BIOS time is current, specially if
BIOS have been reset.
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Boyd Chan
Indeed, that is another way to fix up the time and date – good suggestion 3D 3G Amazon Android Apple battery
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December 11, 2012 at 07:16 (UTC 11) Reply
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Sweet, worked like a charm, thank you. unboxing USB Wi-Fi Windows
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David Cockram
January 18, 2013 at 08:43 (UTC 11) Reply
I was getting so frustrated having tried the regedit posted elsewhere – change MediaBootInstall from 1 to 0 and getting nowhere. This solved
the problem straight away! Thanks!
Boyd Chan
Glad to have put an end to your frustration!
Tom Dman
You are a legend mate, I thought the company that built my system had ripped me off, keep up the good work!
Boyd Chan
Cheers!
kristal wilder
February 5, 2013 at 14:32 (UTC 11) Reply
Thanks so much! I search all over for a solution and this worked.
Boyd Chan
Glad to have helped!
radu
My date and time wasn’t correct. After I changed them it worcked fine
Boyd Chan
Fantastic to hear you were able to solve your problem
Greg Sherman
March 1, 2013 at 08:08 (UTC 11) Reply
I tried the suggestions here, but for this error they did not work for me. However, I had to use the phone-in-to-Microsoft method of activating to
get it to work. Thanks for the tip though!
Boyd Chan
How odd – I did you activate that Windows serial number in the last six months? That can also prevent activation from going
through (I should update the article with that bit of information).
Greg Sherman
2 of 7 11/5/2015 3:59 PM
No – I had not. It was a volume license key though. Not sure if that makes a difference.
yatharth
hi i tried to activate win 8 cp after 15 march but it is not activating what to do
Boyd Chan
The Windows 8 Consumer Preview expired on January 15, 2013 – you shouldn’t really be using the Consumer Preview now as it
will reboot once an hour.
Romy
April 5, 2013 at 01:28 (UTC 11) Reply
This is really work for me. Thanks a bunch
Boyd Chan
No worries at all
KevHF
So simple – I was about to ring MS and find out what the problem was and found this soooo simple fix.
Thanks
Boyd Chan
Indeed it is a simple fix and rather obvious once you know to look for it – it is just so tempting to keep clicking through the setup
process without paying too much attention to the settings as we assume the defaults are usually correct!
Hoang Anh
You help me to save a lot of time :). You are better than MS support guy.
Boyd Chan
Glad you managed to fix your problem!
Terrye Foshee Hawkins

OMG! Thank you so much!!! So simple a solution for such a frustrating problem!!
Boyd Chan
Indeed, very simple once you know how to fix it!
Sean
May 27, 2013 at 12:52 (UTC 11) Reply
thank you
luis mendez
July 9, 2013 at 06:53 (UTC 11) Reply
I just had to fix the date and time and then inmediatly could register it.
Thanks friend.
3 of 7 11/5/2015 3:59 PM
Caid Johnson
Just wanted to ring in and say thank you for this. I got my Surface Pro replaced, and started to get this issue, making me think that they’d
forgotten to activate it at the factory or something.
Checked the date, after reading your post, and sure enough it was off as it couldn’t communicate with time.microsoft.com, or whatever the
default address is. Changed it to another option, it grabbed the right time, and it was immediately activated.
Thank you, thank you, and thank you again.
Dennis
I have tried all solutions given on many sites to no avail. Although I have gone back to ‘factory settings a number of times on my computer I
have never found this error before. So I am online without a single MS update! Any suggestions please.
Win XP
Boyd Chan
Windows XP is getting a bit long in the tooth now and support for security updates will be ending in a bit over 100 days so I would
encourage you to upgrade to something like Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 instead.
The error does seem to relate specifically to the time, date and timezone so the only other remedy I could suggest is to manually
download SP3 for XP here.
Mailus
Hello Boyd
thanks for your support, but I still have problems:

I’m Italian and I use my factory licensing code used for all Win7PRO 32 bit installation (in italian) without any problem.
I’m now trying to install Win7 PRO 64bit (in english), setting ALL timezone for Italy.
…but maybe I made some mistake…
Where I could verify all settings and how to change it to fix the 0x80072f8f error?
Thanks in advance
Best regards
Boyd Chan
You might need to use the “activate by phone” method instead as you may have a prior activated copy using that serial number still
in the latent memory of Microsoft’s activation servers.
TM120
Hi
I have a Windows 2008 server SP1 hosted on a virtual machine, and I get the 0x80072F8F error when trying to activate after the grace period
expired. How do I correct the BIOS of a Virtual machine.
Boyd Chan
Bit late in replying (took some time off blogging) but one thing you may want to check is whether or not your virtual network card is
configured to use NAT or bridged. Try using bridged mode as it will give you an IP address directly on your local network rather than
putting it behind two layers of NAT which could potentially upset the activation process.
Ariel
Hello I’m getting that same error

I checked the time and the zone and it’s correct.
What else can I do to get get rid of that error?
Boyd Chan
Is this on a physical machine or a virtual machine?
Jackson
May 13, 2014 at 15:51 (UTC 11) Reply
Nice blog…..worked for me! Thank you.
4 of 7 11/5/2015 3:59 PM
itman
May 14, 2014 at 13:38 (UTC 11) Reply
Hi
I’ve cloned a VM (vmware) with Windows 2008R2 OEM (with licence correctly activated almost an year ago)
The cloned VM reported OS licence to be activated.
The activation process resulted with error code 0x80072f8f, even if date / time / timezone are correct and the physical server is the same of the
original (and still running VM).
Any suggestions?
Thanks
Boyd Chan
May 14, 2014 at 13:56 (UTC 11) Reply
What happens when you attempt to browse to https://activation.sls.microsoft.com/slspc/SLActivate.asmx in Internet Explorer on the
VM?
Carlos
I was struggling with this for a while. Nothing would work, this link finally did it.. Thanks a million…
Manjul
May 26, 2014 at 07:19 (UTC 11) Reply
How 2 fix dis Problem On win 8.1?

plz suggest me some solution my date and time r already correct.
Boyd Chan
June 2, 2014 at 20:43 (UTC 11) Reply
Perhaps a silly question but is your timezone also correct?
CUBIASTECH
July 22, 2014 at 09:07 (UTC 11) Reply
C’ est fantastique, can same procedure be applied for windows 8?
Boyd Chan
July 22, 2014 at 09:25 (UTC 11) Reply
Yes, same should apply to Windows 8 and 8.1.
Phil
I figured out I was logged in as the local machine Admin and I needed to run IE and login with my Domain account before I could activate.
Farid
November 20, 2014 at 14:32 (UTC 11) Reply
Thanks a ton. last of solved
Abhishek
It didnt worked for me. even after correcting date in BIOS and updating timezone on windows 2012.
Still getting same error message. Please help.
/Virtual
Boyd Chan
Okay, this might be a slightly different problem.
You may need to update the root certificates that were included with the operating system as they make be out of date or revoked. If
you attempt to activate and the root certificates are no longer valid then it could be causing this issue.
Are you able to skip activation, run Windows Update until all patches are installed and then activate?
5 of 7 11/5/2015 3:59 PM
Leonardo Horovitz
I have a Windows Server 2012 R2 under ESXi.

I had an issue and had to repair windows (with the DVD, etc).
After repairing, it lost its activation, and showed error 0x8007007B.
It only showed the last part of the activation key (which was not the correct one).
I wrote the correct one, and now I get 0x80072F8F.
The VM has the correct time, time zone and vmtools installed.
Any clue on what to do…?
Thank you!
Shadrack
Thank you very much, I almost formatted my laptop
Jordan
I needed to restart in order to get it to work but yes, changing the date works. Thanks!
Rui Ferreira
Nice, solved, Thank you!
mike
June 25, 2015 at 12:41 (UTC 11) Reply
dude I have been working on my daughters dell laptop for hours with no luck ! in a few simple words you have cleared it all up !!! thank you so
much for you time and efforts ! you just saved me a lot of money that I did not have to spend !
thanks again :))
Alberto
amazing it worked. simple time change!

thank you.
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How to Fix Windows Activation Error 0x80072F8F » Boydo's Tech Talk http://mingersoft.com/blog/2012/05/how-to-fix-windows-activation-err...

simple enough to fix and put behind you!

Tags: activation, Windows View more tweets

Skip to comment form ↓

Boydo's Tech Talk shared a

Like Comment Share

Firefox Galaxy S Google Hard Drive

Glad to have put an end to your frustration!

Glad to have helped!

Fantastic to hear you were able to solve your problem

hi i tried to activate win 8 cp after 15 march but it is not activating what to do

This is really work for me. Thanks a bunch

Glad you managed to fix your problem!

Terrye Foshee Hawkins

Indeed, very simple once you know how to fix it!

Thank you, thank you, and thank you again.

thanks for your support, but I still have problems:

Hello I’m getting that same error

Is this on a physical machine or a virtual machine?

Nice blog…..worked for me! Thank you.

How 2 fix dis Problem On win 8.1?

Perhaps a silly question but is your timezone also correct?

C’ est fantastique, can same procedure be applied for windows 8?

Yes, same should apply to Windows 8 and 8.1.

Thanks a ton. last of solved

Still getting same error message. Please help.

Okay, this might be a slightly different problem.

I have a Windows Server 2012 R2 under ESXi.

Thank you very much, I almost formatted my laptop

Nice, solved, Thank you!

amazing it worked. simple time change!

Name: * Email: * Website:

You may use these HTML tags and attributes:

Copyright Return to top

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