Proxy Activating Windows

Proxy Activating Windows

Re-posted from: http://community.sophos.com/t5/Sophos-gateway-protection/Activating-Windows-products-using-ws1000/td-p/2284

The windows support website recommends making exemptions for the following url's.

• http://go.microsoft.com/
• https://sls.microsoft.com/
• https://sls.microsoft.com:443
• http://crl.microsoft.com/pki/crl/products/MicrosoftRootAuthority.crl
• http://crl.microsoft.com/pki/crl/products/MicrosoftProductSecureCommunications.crl
• http://www.microsoft.com/pki/crl/products/MicrosoftProductSecureCommunications.crl
• http://crl.microsoft.com/pki/crl/products/MicrosoftProductSecureServer.crl
• http://www.microsoft.com/pki/crl/products/MicrosoftProductSecureServer.crl
• https://activation.sls.microsoft.com

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/921471 says 0x8004FE33 may occur when you connect to the Internet through a proxy server where Basic* authentication is enabled.  To work around it, it says to disable Basic authentication.

If Active Directory integration is enabled on your web appliance, then:

1. Log on to the Administration Web Interface of your web appliance.
2. Go to the Configuration > System > Active Directory page.
3. Enable the Allow unauthenticated browsing for the following IU addresses option if it is not already enabled.
4. Click Add.  Enter the IP address of the computer that you want to activate Windows.  Save the change.
5. Click Apply.

With these steps, the web appliance will not require your computer to authenticate before connecting to the Internet.  After Windows is activated, you can then remove the IP address from the list on the web appliance.

* Our AD integration supports NTLM authentication only and not Basic authentication; however, both authentication schemes reply to the clients a message to provide credential information when they try to connect to the Internet.  It is this message that Windows Activation cannot handle.  Therefore, allowing unauthenticated browsing for the computer that you want to activate Windows should resolve the issue.