Like the 100′s of times before,  you install Windows 2008 R2 on to a server , try activating it ,and get the error :-

0x8007232B – DNS name does not exist

then you remember to set the proxy settings.. you open internet explorer and change the proxy settings , you can now browse the internet,   and try activation again

but this time it still fails… that’s not supposed to happen, as you can access the web.  (also phone activation completely failed at this point too.)

This time it fails with code 0x8004FE2F

You find other blogs  on the internet, which suggest that its your proxy settings that have not been set,  and they are right but what they don’t tell you is specifically its Internet Explorer (64 bit) you need to set the proxy for. I had inadvertently set the IE (32 bit) settings previously.

Happy installations.