Office 2010: "Error 25004. The product key you entered cannot be used on this machine"

[Beloved]

I recently purchased office 2010 from a retail outlet. I was just installing it on my Windows XP SP3 computer but it gives me an error message "Error 25004. The product key you entered cannot be used on this machine". I tried to contact the shop but they said there are not into the picture. So what should I do? Who is responsible for this and will provide me the solution? Please help!

[Luis234]

The key that you are using during the installation must be a trial key. It is just a temporary key which can be installed on a machine once and so cannot be used any more. In other words, if you install office with a trial key on your machine and if it expires then it doesn't mean that you can uninstall the program and then reinstall it once again by using either the same key or something different. It is stored in the registry and so cannot be removed. This is how security is maintained by Microsoft. The above error message is common in such situations.

[Aleksandra]

It is not possible to use a trial version of software after their expiration. You may need to purchase a legal version of the software in order to continue its usage. So just contact Microsoft to provide you with a legal serial/product key and then use it to activate your office 2010. However if you were not running any office setups previously then I think your manufacturer might have installed some trial version of office on your computer in order to attract costumers and hence increase sales. In such situations you may try to format your computer with the CDs provided to you and then try to install the software.

[Elsie]

There is yet another solution to install office 2010 without formatting your computer. All you need is to clean your registries with some good registry cleaner software. There are lot of such software's available on the internet. Simply search it on Google and you will find 100's of such software. It will remove all the unnecessary entries from the Windows registry and thus you can use your legal (and also trial version) of office 2010 for longer period.

[Elijah]

I don't think there is any need to install or use any third party software just to remove some entries from Windows Registry. Its too simple. All you need is to open up the registry, find out the correct entry that is creating you the problem and delete it. This is better option than the above one and even you can trust yourself what you are trying to remove. You won't be believing any third party software which may also do some other activities which could infect your computer and create problem in the near future. Look for "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office" and "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office" in the Windows Registry and delete it. That's it. Reboot your computer for changes to take effect.