I had this problem last year. Just keep hammering the server and it will eventually activate. Then mirror your drive so you don't have this BS again.

Office 2003 is the same.

eta: Here is my old thread on this.

I'd hazard a guess that activation requires encryption that is no longer supported due to it being a strong severity risk. But surely they could maintain some less-secure, highly-monitored activation servers to service activation requests, despite 2003R2SP2 being out of extended support since 14JUL2015 (14APR2009 without the service pack). And despite Errius' success last year, something could have further changed. "Just keep at it" I suppose.

I just had the same issue last night. The solution was to install SP2 and then update to IE8 and then the system was activated.

Basically without the updates the OS doesn't know the activating server got moved so can't connect (or something like that). Same reason Windows Update doesn't work with the built in IE6 from a new install.

The thing is, Server 2003 R2 has SP2 integrated, or maybe not. Who knows? I'll report back once I get my main PC out of storage since it has the CD key stored on the hard drive.

Nah R2 is only at SP1 level. You still need to install SP2
If fact if you don't put the 2nd CD in during install it'll keep you at the non R2 level of 2003
(and I doubt many people ever really needed the extra R2 features)

I did call MS Activation few years ago after WinXP support had ended and was able to activate fine.
These days I just use Volume licence editions anyway. I keeping like for like, that is its not like I'm installing WinXP Pro on a PC that only has a XP Home licence on it and I can prove I have a licence for the actual product I'm using.

Sucks having authorization servers to begin with. Companies will eventually abandon old non profitable software or they might even go out of business eventually (or get bought out and shut down).

I have a retail version of Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium which would be basically useless since Adobe shut down their authorization servers a long time ago. Adobe did make a hidden page with downloads and serials for users of this suite so they can still use it after a reformat. I prefer older software where you just needed a serial number.

chinny22 wrote:

Nah R2 is only at SP1 level. You still need to install SP2 If fact if you don't put the 2nd CD in during install it'll keep you […]
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Nah R2 is only at SP1 level. You still need to install SP2
If fact if you don't put the 2nd CD in during install it'll keep you at the non R2 level of 2003
(and I doubt many people ever really needed the extra R2 features)

I did call MS Activation few years ago after WinXP support had ended and was able to activate fine.
These days I just use Volume licence editions anyway. I keeping like for like, that is its not like I'm installing WinXP Pro on a PC that only has a XP Home licence on it and I can prove I have a licence for the actual product I'm using.

Most people I know use a XP Media Center Edition to get around that.

IIRC, activation was the reason everybody hated Windows XP when it first came out.