Trying to resurrect 10 year old software - can't activate Windows Server 2008 R2 and problems with Activate by Phone

I wrote a workshop database application for a client in Romania that had a Land Rover dealership a long long time ago in Access 2.0. Haven't heard from him in years, then last week he calls. He is still using the program ! and want me to "update" it.

Thank goodness for old MSDN library CD folders in back of file cabinets. So, I have installed an old copy of Win Server 2008 R2 Enterprise and loaded up Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode to run the MS Office Access 2.0 program. Then set about trying to re-activating all this 10 year old software. Surprisingly everything went smoothly until I got to the Win Server 2008 R2 with SP1.

I couldn't activate it online, kept getting errors that said the cause was timing out. So I tried to activate the phone call method. After executing the slui 4 cmd, the "Activate by Phone" window form opens, but the location drop-down is not enabled. It is greyed out and stuck on Afghanistan. The form isn't frozen or locked up, it just doesn't give me an option to change my location.

Anyone else seen this happen? Any ideas on how to activate this last piece of s/w or a workaround for the Activate By Phone form?

Any and all help will be greatly appreciated.

Solution 1:

I've seen this on Windows XP machines 3-4 years ago. While you can't select the country, it will activate by phone, so the matter is just finding a phone number you can call.

I used a phone number for Norway found on this page.

It was not a VLK edition I activated.