I am rolling out a new virtualised environment. One of the Guest machines wont activate. I only mention the virtualisation so that you understand there are almost no differences between this machine and all my other successfully activated machines. The only difference, is I have Kaspersky Administration Kit installed. If I click any links relating to activating windows, I get no response. In the event log however I get event ID 8198, with the text contained in the subject line of this question. I had a look around and others with similar problems are using Win7 and its related to UAC or other. I've tried their solutions (cmd as admin, run slui.exe or the vbs one), I've tried running slui.exe as admin. The admin kit itself shouldn't interfere with the process. The antivirus is the same as exists on all the other servers. O/S is Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise. Any ideas what could cause this or what my next diagnostic step should be?

Hi, Let’s try to temporarily disable Windows Firewall and Kaspersky Antivirus program. After that, perform a Clean Boot for activation. For the detailed steps of how to enter into Clean Boot, please refer to the following Microsoft KB article: How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135 What’s the result in Clean Boot? Regards,Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Hi Arthur, Thank you for responding. Unfortunately I would not have been able to follow your instructions due to time constrains. Windows firewall was already off and disabling Kaspersky was one of the first actions I took. I may be able to clone the machine in the future for diagnosis. For anyone googling, what I did to get around this was use slmgr.vbs on the command line. I got the code, then used the phone service to get the confirmation, and finally entered both together. All the arguments pop up when you use it. Not ideal but it worked.