Product Key error message

Question

I have Widows Vista and try to open a Word file. I get a pop up window that requests the 25 character product key. The key is on a sticker under the laptop. I enter the key and the response is 'INCORRECT'

I click on the link to troubleshoot and Internet Explorer cannot display the page http://r.office.microsoft.com/r/rlidAWSContentRedir?AssetID=XT012340581033&CTT=11&Origin=1033

What now?

Answer 1

.... I click on the link to troubleshoot and Internet Explorer cannot display the page http://r.office.microsoft.com/r/rlidAWSContentRedir?AssetID=XT012340581033&CTT=11&Origin=1033

Hi Madrid2:

That URL opens a Microsoft Office support page titled "Install Office 2007" (see image below), so Palcouk is correct that you are being prompted to enter a valid product key for a Microsoft Office product. Do you have MS Office 2007 or some other Office product installed on your Vista computer, and if so do you have a valid product key and is your MS Word able to open other .doc files and other MS Word documents correctly?

Just an aside, but if you are still using Internet Explorer 9 as the web browser on your Vista machine I'd suggest switching to Mozilla's Firefox ESR v52.9.0 (rel. 26-Jun-2018) instead. Firefox ESR v52.9.0 is the legacy Firefox edition for Win XP and Vista, and unlike IE9, this Firefox browser supports TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2 protocols for connecting to secure https sites. This means that many https sites that won't open in your IE9 browser will open correctly with Firefox ESR v52.9.0. Firefox ESR v52.9.0 can also be configured to use the latest TLS 1.3 protocol (see Martin Brinkmann's June 2017 ghacks.net article How to Enable TLS 1.3 Support in Firefox and Chrome) that might be required to connect to newer web sites.

If you want to try Firefox ESR v52.9.0 go to https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/52.9.0esr/win32/ and open the appropriate subfolder for your language and region to find the correct full offline installer. For example, choose the en-US subfolder at https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/52.9.0esr/win32/en-US/ if you want the English-US installer named Firefox Setup 52.9.0esr.exe.

I've also added the Adblock Plus for Firefox ad blocker and Bitdefender TrafficLight for Firefox extensions to Firefox ESR v52.9.0 to make browsing a bit safer, but I would strongly advise against using a Vista SP2 computer for anything that requires a higher level of security like online shopping or banking, even after adding these extra protections to an unsupported Firefox ESR v52.9.0 browser that has not been patched since June 2018.

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32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox ESR v52.9.0 * Malwarebytes Premium v3.5.1-1.0.365
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3 GB RAM, 250 GB WD SATA HDD, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS -----------
64-bit Win 10 Pro v21H1 build 19043.1288 * Firefox v93.0 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.2109.6
Dell Inspiron 5584, Intel i5-8265U CPU, 8 GB RAM, Toshiba KBG40ZNS256G 256 GB NVMe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620

Answer 2

The sticker on the base of the device is the win key.

The msg requires the Office key

Answer 3

You may be interested in using either of these two free Office Suites which are compatible with Windows.

Open Office:

https://www.openoffice.org/

Libre Office:

https://www.libreoffice.org/

Cheers.