Windows Vista activation DNS bug (error 0x8007232b)

Thursday, March 15th, 2007

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, 0x8007232b.

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.

There are 9 comments in this article:

  1. 18/06/2007Robert said:

    Marc,

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

    Robert

  2. 5/07/2007Paul said:

    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. 11/07/2007Terry said:

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

  4. 12/10/2007Ethan said:

    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. 24/02/2008Henrik Pedersen said:

    It’s the same problem with Windows Server 2008.

  6. 13/03/2008John said:

    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. 26/04/2008khafagiagi@gmail.com said:

    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. 2/06/2008bean2thousand said:

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

  9. 26/08/2008kiran solanki said:

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