While installing and activating a volume license edition of Windows 7, I was faced with a problem while trying to activate the new OS.  Each time I ran the activation program from the GUI, I received the error “A problem occurred when windows tried to activate.  Error code 0x8007232B.”

This problem has been discussed on one of the Vista forums so I thought I’d distill what worked for me in a short article.

I had to install the product key using the command line.  To do this, you must first open a command prompt with elevated privileges (runas administrator).

Next, use the command line

slmgr -ipk XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

where the X’s are your product key.

The installation of the product should be instantaneous.

Finally, activate windows from Control Panel | System and Security | System.

If Windows is already activated, you won’t see the activate link.