I kept getting this error in my Vista Enterprise install. I tried a bunch of stuff including turning off the firewall, going to a different network, and at the end of it all, the error had nothing to do with “Timeout” — The product key I’ve entered was bad. Arrgh!
–
2 | Richard
Thanks, I just had to change my key and it activated fine. In my case it was Windows 2008 Server.
3 | Alex
February 26th, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Thanks alot 
I had this problem after changing the motherboard in a server machine. The Server was already activated(!!!), so the serial number I’ve entered was definitely correct.
It seems that this problem also occures when the Server want’s to re-activate because of changed hardware, even if it was already activated bevore…
