IE8 test VM activation blocked

Lorenzo Dalla Vecchia 96 Reputation points
2021-05-05T20:00:07.427+00:00

Hi,

I' am using the IE8 on Win7 (x86) Virtual Machine (installed on Hyper-V) to perform testing on IE8.
Recently, it has become impossible to activate Windows 7 inside the VM because its product key has been blocked by Microsoft.

This effectively reduces the usage period to just 10 days before I have to reinstall the VM.

Has the product key been blocked by accident?

Thanks.

PS: sorry for choosing a somewhat unrelated tag but I could not find any existing tag that covered my question.

Edit

Here is a screenshot of the error.
The error code is 0xC004C003.

94272-blocked-product-key.png

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Accepted answer
  1. Lorenzo Dalla Vecchia 96 Reputation points
    2021-05-06T13:25:17.16+00:00

    I ended up using the Windows 10 VM which for some reason still works.

    I don't know why the product key is blacklisted and the VMs that can still be downloaded from https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/ are not usable.
    Microsoft should fix them (by replacing their embedded product key) or take them down.

    Thanks everyone for your help.

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5 additional answers

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  1. Dave Patrick 425.7K Reputation points MVP
    2021-05-05T20:15:05.777+00:00

    This one might help.
    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/deployment/error-0xc004e002-during-activation

    --please don't forget to Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--


  2. Yuhan Deng 3,761 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2021-05-06T01:42:45.16+00:00

    Hi,
    Would you provide details such as error code or screenshot when the issue happened? It would help us identify the problem quicker.
    Anyway, you can refer to this article and see if it helps:
    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/error-message-when-you-try-to-activate-windows-7-or-windows-vista-an-error-has-occurred-91541c3f-b742-24fb-17b7-6fd238a46799

    Thanks for your time.
    Best regards,
    Danny

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  3. Dave Patrick 425.7K Reputation points MVP
    2021-05-06T01:46:12.193+00:00

    Any progress or updates?

    --please don't forget to Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--

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  4. Yuhan Deng 3,761 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2021-05-06T07:02:07.62+00:00

    Hi Lorenzo,
    Here’s another article:
    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started/activation-error-codes
    94273-image.png
    Would you try this? It seems that you could obtain a new key this way after those steps.

    Thanks for your time.
    Best regards,
    Danny

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