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:
- Go backwards through the setup to review the time, date and timezone parameters and ensure that they are correct (6PM in India is not the same as 6PM in Australia),
- 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).
Microsoft seems to want to enforce correct times and dates with its serial key validations thus the errors being thrown when a validating computer is outside of the tolerated window (presumably with settings ahead or behind the extremes of the UTC timezones). At any rate, this is simple enough to fix and put behind you!
30 comments
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sss
June 5, 2012 at 12:14 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
finaly it solved in simple step… change the time to some old date, and try to activate it will wokr
Laszlo
June 5, 2012 at 17:56 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
Worked for me too. Set the date back a day and presto!
Wesley
June 5, 2012 at 23:22 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
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?
Boyd Chan
June 6, 2012 at 07:56 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
Did you also check that you have the right timezone set in addition to the date and time?
wild
October 1, 2012 at 04:55 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
Thanks
FIXME
October 19, 2012 at 16:02 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
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.
Boyd Chan
October 19, 2012 at 19:13 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
Indeed, that is another way to fix up the time and date – good suggestion
Dee
December 11, 2012 at 07:16 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
Sweet, worked like a charm, thank you.
David Cockram
January 18, 2013 at 08:43 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
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
January 18, 2013 at 09:15 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
Glad to have put an end to your frustration!
Tom Dman
January 19, 2013 at 12:40 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
You are a legend mate, I thought the company that built my system had ripped me off, keep up the good work!
Boyd Chan
January 19, 2013 at 15:04 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
Cheers!
kristal wilder
February 5, 2013 at 14:32 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
Thanks so much! I search all over for a solution and this worked.
Boyd Chan
February 5, 2013 at 14:33 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
Glad to have helped!
radu
February 18, 2013 at 02:06 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
My date and time wasn’t correct. After I changed them it worcked fine
Boyd Chan
February 18, 2013 at 09:45 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
Fantastic to hear you were able to solve your problem
Greg Sherman
March 1, 2013 at 08:08 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
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
March 1, 2013 at 08:11 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
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
March 2, 2013 at 00:52 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
No – I had not. It was a volume license key though. Not sure if that makes a difference.
yatharth
March 18, 2013 at 00:10 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
hi i tried to activate win 8 cp after 15 march but it is not activating what to do
Boyd Chan
March 18, 2013 at 10:22 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
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 10) Link to this comment
This is really work for me. Thanks a bunch
Boyd Chan
April 9, 2013 at 09:56 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
No worries at all
KevHF
April 9, 2013 at 03:19 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
So simple – I was about to ring MS and find out what the problem was and found this soooo simple fix.
Thanks
Boyd Chan
April 9, 2013 at 09:56 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
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
April 23, 2013 at 11:30 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
You help me to save a lot of time
. You are better than MS support guy.
Boyd Chan
April 23, 2013 at 18:58 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
Glad you managed to fix your problem!
Terrye Foshee Hawkins
April 24, 2013 at 18:32 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
OMG! Thank you so much!!! So simple a solution for such a frustrating problem!!
Boyd Chan
April 25, 2013 at 11:03 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
Indeed, very simple once you know how to fix it!
Sean
May 27, 2013 at 12:52 (UTC 10) Link to this comment
thank you