Activation Wizard

[Niall]

Hello,

I have the trial of Office 2007 installed on my new laptop. When I try to
activate it using the Activation Wizard, I keep running into a communication
error. I get to the spot that says "I want to activate the software over the
Internet" then I hit "next".

After 1-2 minutes a message pops up saying "A communication error has
occurred. Your request cannot be processed at this time. Please try again in
a few minutes."

It seems that it cannot connect to the Internet and transmit the
information. However, I can access the Internet from the laptop as I can go
to other sites without any problem. I have turned off all the security
features and firewalls. I have been trying this for hours and am becoming
totally frustrated.

Help please.

Thanks,
Niall

 

[Peter Foldes]

Use the phone activation. You have the 1-800 number showing on the Activation Screen

 

[Niall]

After doing a search on Office Discussion Groups, I see that this issue has
been very common over the last year. However from all the threads I still
didn't actually see a solution. Except one person said that the server on
Microsoft's end is very busy so one has to keep trying again. Is this still
the case?

Any other suggestions?

 

[Niall]

Hi,
Unfortunately mine is the trial version, and it says that you cannot
activate the trial version over the phone, only the purchased version.

Niall

 

[Peter Foldes]

My bad

..Sorry I missed the Trial in your post. It is there in Black and White but as usual I sometimes screw up.

 

[Peter Foldes]

Post back if it does not work .

 

[Niall]

Aha I finally figured out the problem. I thought I had turned my firewall off
but apparently it wasn't completely disabled. After completely disabling my
firewall, the activation worked perfectly.

This seems fairly complicated for a novice person to figure out. I don't
think the average person would think (or know how) to disable their firewall
for this kind of task. When a connection problem occurs during the
Activation, a message should mention the Firewall as a possible reason for
the connection problem. Wonder where Microsoft's "suggestion box" is located.

Niall