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While installing a third party software on my laptop running Microsoft Windows 8, the operating system informed me that it required to download and install the .NET Framework 3.5. After my consent, it failed to download the package to install. I thought nothing of it and left the task for later.

However, this began to be a recurring episode. Even the very .NET Framework setup program would fail. While installing Windows Live Essentials (I really love Live Writer), the error happened again:

The error code 0x800F0906 wasn’t something I knew about and the support link is an awful article which suggest an over the top work around.

So I tried some common sense and analogy. If you’re used to administering Windows 2008 Servers you should know that the Microsoft .NET 3.5 Framework is installed from the feature selection on the add/remove role operation for the Application Server. Windows 7 itself has features that are essential for system administration like Telnet, and yet you have to add them manually.

With these aspects in mind I went to the Windows 8 Start screen and typed “Features”. Afterwards I selected “Settings” in the search bar and the desired option appeared, called “Programs and Features”:

From the list, you just choose the .NET Framework 3.5 and choose to download from Windows Update:

Now just wait for the installation to complete:

I was all set to go. You should be too .

Last night I finally installed Windows 8 RTM on my laptop. Having tried and enjoyed the developer’s preview, everything was thumbs up until I tried to activate the software and prove it genuine. The process didn’t ask me for the 5x5 digit key (seemed like it already had one) and it presented the following error message:



After searching the Web for a solution, I found out here that this might happen when you get your installation media from MSDN or Technet and try to install and activate outside your corporate network. The activation wizard  by default will look for a Key Management Service (KMS) host on your internal network. It will not try to activate using the internet to reach Microsoft Activation servers.

I tried the suggested solution, which is to open an elevated CMD prompt and run the following command, as shown below::



It still didn’t work, reporting an invalid key error. My installation media is not illegal or counterfeit software, so I edited the file “slmgr.vbs” and examined the script content. There was an option to uninstall the existing product key:



After executing the script with the “upk” option, I simply pressed the “Activate” button again, it asked for my activation key and worked like a charm:



Hope this helps!