Is anyone else having trouble with Microsoft activation services today? I'm unable to authenticate an existing Windows Home installation or upgrade it to Pro, and the activation site sometimes fails to load or returns errors. Other reports mention new devices failing activation, Autopilot setup not completing, and error code 0x8004FE94. Has the service recovered for anyone, or is there an outage affecting activation right now?
3 Answers
Yes, activation services appear to be having an outage or intermittent disruption. New machines aren’t activating, Home-to-Pro upgrades are failing, and some devices are returning errors during setup. It may be best to wait and retry rather than change the installations.
I’m seeing the same issue with multiple new desktops, and Autopilot provisioning hasn’t completed for any of them today. One reported error is 0x8004FE94, so this seems broader than a single device or local network problem.
There are widespread activation problems, although the service seems to be recovering intermittently. It started working again for me, so retrying later may succeed, but the outage does not appear to be fully resolved yet.
I tested from several devices and saw the same behavior. The service sometimes opens, but then fails authentication or throws an error later.