I had installed Windows 7 onto an older Core 2 Duo when activation had failed. I had issues activating saying the license was invalid. After re-entering the KMS server and key it still gave me problems. I started with Google which led me to this MS article which didn’t quite solve the problem but gave some insight.

Symptom 1

Error message 1

Error Code: Invalid Volume License Key

In order to activate, you need to change your product key to a valid Multiple Activation Key (MAK) or Retail key.

You must have a qualifying operating system license AND a Volume license Windowsupgrade license, or a full license for Windowsthrough an OEM or from a retail source .

ANY OTHER INSTALLATION OF THIS SOFTWARE IS IN VIOLATION OF YOUR AGREEMENT AND APPLICABLE COPYRIGHT LAW.

Error message 2

Error Code: 0xC004F059Description: The Software Licensing Service reported that a license in the computer BIOS is invalid.

Symptom 2

Error Code: 0xc004f035
The Software Licensing Service reported that the computer could not be activated with a Volume license product key. Volume licensed systems require upgrading from a qualified operating system. Please contact your system administrator or use a different type of key.

Solution

Microsoft’s lists two causes, however they both boil down to ACPI_SLIC, or in other words, the BIOS. Following the articles recommendation, download MGADiag and run it.

MIcrosoft's Genuine Advantage Diagnostics Tool

What you will want to check here is if the BIOS is indeed the problem. Click Copy in the lower right corner and paste the results into notepad. You will want to inspect the OEM Activation 2.0 Data section, seen below with a healthy one.

OEM Activation 2.0 Data-->
BIOS valid for OA 2.0: yes
Windows marker version: 0x20001
OEMID and OEMTableID Consistent: yes

If yours shows up invalid, the one trick Microsoft DOES NOT recommend in their article that solved it for me was to UPDATE THE BIOS. The desktop I was working with was a slightly older Asus P5B motherboard with a bios date from 2006. An update to 2009 with the latest (beta) bios made it work beautifully even with me being very skeptic.

Hope this helps!

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