If you handle Windows licensing for your organization, you might want to skip this update. According to a report from <a href="https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-confirms-windows-activation-failures-after-november-updates/” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>BleepingComputer, this month’s Patch Tuesday rollout is triggering a 0x80041008 error that’s causing activation issues for some users.
The outlet cited a Microsoft service alert that mostly affects organizations that automate how they activate and license Windows, especially anyone running the Software Licensing Management Tool, or SLMGR, from the command line.
What’s actually going wrong?
Microsoft says affected devices might get hit with the 0x80041008 error when trying to activate Windows, set up Key Management Service (KMS), or manage product keys. Devices already using KMS activation aren’t left stranded, though, since, as Microsoft put it, “KMS-activated devices typically remain activated for up to 180 days following successful activation.”
The failure occurs after running two specific commands, slmgr.vbs /skms-domain and slmgr.vbs /ipk, and it spans a wide range of systems, including Windows 10 21H2 and 22H2, Windows 11 23H2, and Windows Server 2019, 2022, and 2025.
Is your PC one of the ones affected?
If you’re a regular Windows user who has never touched SLMGR or KMS settings, you can breathe easy. Microsoft says, “Devices that are already activated remain activated. Customers whose devices already have the appropriate KMS client key and KMS configuration, and who do not need to run the affected Slmgr.vbs commands, are not expected to be affected.”
This one mostly lands on IT teams and businesses managing activation at scale. Microsoft says a proper fix is coming within days, and anyone needing an immediate workaround can contact Microsoft Support for business.
This isn’t Microsoft’s only rough patch lately either. As BleepingComputer also noted, the same week Microsoft also confirmed that November’s security update refuses to install on PCs still running October’s preview build, and that updates since October’s Patch Tuesday have been messing with SQL Server performance too.
The ongoing Outlook outageis another example of how Microsoft is failing to keep its services running in an orderly fashion. Although Microsoft has not commented on the reasons, my bet is that a deluge of AI-written code very well might be behind these issues. We’ve seen similar things happen with companies like Amazon in the past, so I wouldn’t dismiss this theory just yet.
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