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I recently installed Windows Server 2008, using a MSDN Volume
License.
Now every few days, windows tries to activate itself and fails. The
error I get is
Error Code 0x80072558
Description:
DNS name contains an invalid character.
Do I even need to activate, since I installed from a MSDN CD with a
volume license?
If I do, how do I activate my Windows License?
Any and all help appreciated.
There's no such thing - volume licenses are not MSDN :-)
Yes, you do.
You need to change your Product Key to the MSDN product key.
By default this is Volume Licensed media, so activation is querying the DNS
server for a KMS host machine.
With MSDN you get a MAK key to use for activation, however you need to
change your product key to that MSDN key.
Right-click on Computer on the Start Menu, choose Properties and use the
change key option.
This error message means the default installation key for volume license is
installed on that machine.
When default key is installed ( VL installs this key by default) goes to
activate it queries DNS for locating a KMS host machine.
It queries for DNS for _VLMCS (KMS host name is what is expected)
It's getting a response, however the data in the response not valid.
So the DNS is server has a value for this but it's not a valid response.
Since this is MSDN, the odds are there isn't a KMS host machine available.
So the user more than likely needs to enter his MSDN key which is a MAK
product key.
Thank you so much for your informative response. Put in the MSDN
key, and the OS activated without any problems. Thanks, again.
OK. I downloaded my MSDN copy and simply got the key from the download page,
so I didn't have any problems.
I changed the key number to the one I have on the eOpen web site and then I was able to activated .