wanchoo said:
If your problem has got sorted out then well and good. But if it surfaces again please don't activate over the Net but phone Microsoft, explain your problem and request them to activate.

They shall do it for you gladly and in the process you would have got rid of the problem forever.
Telephone activation does nothing at all that internet activates does not do - and in fact it probably does less, because there is no data exchanged with the activation server except for the confirmation codes.

The only time when Telephone activation is necessary (apart from when an internet connection is not available) is when there is a query over the Key - such as it failing internet activationfor a blocked key with a valid Key, and then you would need to speak to an operator to sort out the mess.


Telephone activation may be required under certain circumstances - such as first-time activation of an OEM Key - but other than that, it's pretty useless at anything except as a first call to a support incident.

I have no idea where people get this idea that telephone activation is a cure-all. Far from it, it tends to do nothing but confuse, and waste everyone's time:)

In this particular case, as far as I can tell, the problem is almost certainly a race condition, where two or more programs are competing for resources. If one of those programs is the Software Protection Service, then the machine may show a non-genuine message. Usually that will disappear on a reboot, or by validating at www.microsoft.com/genuine/validate .
Unfortunately tracking down the source of such problems tends to be a fruitless exercise, as the very act of looking changes the conditions and it doesn't happen - turn your back for five minutes and BANG, there it is
The good news is that they do tend to sort themselves out over a period, as the system self-optimises its way out of the road-block.