0x80041015 error (solved)

Question

I recently upgraded to Windows 10.  As a result, I somehow got upgraded from Office 2013 to 2016.  Which would be great except every time I open any office program, I get prompted to activate.  (I am an office 365 subscriber.)  I put in my login info and get system error 0x80041015.  When I click the x to exit out of the activation process, I get an error saying that "Microsoft OFfice can't find your license for this application.  A repair attempt was unsuccessful or was cancelled.  Microsoft Office will now exit.  I have tried the following things:

1. Uninstall and re-install.  No luck.
2. Everything found in this thread: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office\_2016\_preview-office\_install/office-2016-preview-error-0x80041015/35ea117a-0d93-4939-99cb-83e82a6434e9 

No luck.

3. This hotfix run as an administrator: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2968890 

No luck.

I was on the phone with a level one tech from Microsoft who then scheduled me to talk to a level 2 tech.  In 48 hours.

Answer 1

Fixed it.  Here's what I did:

In addition to the steps above, I also did this one: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Manually-uninstall-Office-2016-or-Office-365-4e2904ea-25c8-4544-99ee-17696bb3027b?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

That didn't really do much for me so through some trial and error, (which I won't bore you with), I went through and did the answer found here: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office\_2013\_release-office\_install/office-2013-on-windows-81-error-25004-tried/6aec433a-6fac-4b15-988d-009d651d90dd?page=2

Renaming the tokens.dat file found at C:\Windows\System32\spp\store\2.0\ to tokens.dat.old let me do an install that worked.

Answer 2

Thank you so so much. After 12 wasted hours trying everything under the sun, this simple change to tokens.dat solved it.

Answer 3

Not the OP, but having exact same problem and have followed your steps and still can't activate. Seems related to win 10 as installed and activated without problems on my win 8.1 laptop.

Answer 4

Hi,

Welcome to Microsoft Community and thank you for posting your query.

We appreciate your effort towards resolve the issue and understand that it dint worked for you.

A quick question before we proceed.

Let’s follow below steps and verify the results.

Let’s deactivate Office first, by login to the My Account page on Office.com with the Microsoft account you used to register or purchase.

http://office.microsoft.com/myaccount

After deactivating Office from My Account page, let’s manually uninstall the Office suite, restart the PC.

 Please refer to the below link to Uninstall office suite manually.

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Manually-uninstall-Office-2013-or-Office-365-1d1110d5-75a4-4154-969e-4260ff29b232?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

Note: Steps in the above article applies to Office 2016 also.

Disclaimer: Ensure to back up complete registry following steps mentioned in the article below as manual uninstallation involves in deleting the registry entries.

Refer to the below link on how to back up registry.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756

Once the manual uninstallation is completed, you may create new Windows user account.

You may refer to the below article for suggestions to create new user account.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-in/windows-10/create-a-local-user-account-in-windows-10

You may also temporarily disable the third party security program. (If you have installed any)

If you have installed any third party security program, then I request you to contact its technical support to temporarily disable the program and then check the issue.

Disclaimer: Antivirus software can help protect your computer against viruses and other security threats. In most cases, you shouldn't disable your antivirus software. If you have to temporarily disable it to install other software, you should re-enable it as soon as you're done. If you're connected to the Internet or a network while your antivirus software is disabled, your computer is vulnerable to attacks.

Hope it helps. Try the suggestions and let us know the result at your earliest convenience.

Thank you.

Answer 5

I'm having exactly the same problem. Seems to be a massive problem with no guaranteed solution at present. Wondering whether to uninstall win 10, but not convinced even that would help. I've already wasted many hours yesterday trying all the fixes on this forum and none worked.