My products de-registered without reason on new laptop!

Short form: My old laptop is gone, XP, worked well. New one with Vista32 bought a week ago. Registered all of my NI-products via Service center. Worked well. A few days later Reaktor5, FM8, GR2-3 were NOT registered. ? Kontakt 2 stayed registered. I swear registration was successful (direct online, not "over another computer).
I re-registered. Ran all NI-products. Now tonigh (it's night in Germany right now;-) ALL are de-registered again.....

wtf is this? Is this a known problem?

My new laptop (AMD Turion64X2 2,20Ghz, 3GB Ram, Vista home premium) runs extreeeemely lousy, worse than my old gone one from 2003 (which ran great). Horrible. And now this additional problem. I wrote to the support, but need a quick answer because I can give back this machine after the first few days, and as it doesn't work right, I really think about this.

Anyone who had a similar problem? What could be done? It is a pain to spend 80% of your time for music with things like this...

First question: What could I have done wrong from my site? Needs the Service center that i de-activate the old laptop-registerings before I register new ones? (would be difficult because the old one is not more, and so I don't know the details;-). But in that case registrations wouldn't have worked!


? Any help would be wery much appreciated. I'll post if I decide to give the machine (harddrive is okay, no errors and so on, it's new...) back and thus wouldn't need advice anymore)

edit: I let antivir run, and it found, of course, no virus, and spybot search and destroy found nothing too. Harddrive (new, so no clapping hands and bowing down here;-) works allright (chkdsk found nothing). So ? Any clues?

 

Hi there,

I think you just called us and discussed this problem with my colleague Martin. We currently assume some kind of Mainboard problem causing our system id creation (which is including a hardware finger print from some basic components of your computer) to assume that your computer has changed. This is a rare problem which we rather see very rarely, though it mostly concerns AMD multi processor machines. The poor performance you observe is also something which is indicating a major problem, either with the hardware itself or the installation.

 

answer from support just if someone experiences a similar problem

Okay, here is a short answer just in case someone had the same problem.

Virus: none. Bios etc - all new and no update available. So problem couldn't be solved. The support told me it is NO common problem with Vista 32 bit, most registrations work perfect.

I own other challenge-response software that does *not* deactivate itself (Soundforge9, quantumfx2, Revalver MK2 for example). But every challenge response system works different.

So all I could do was activating my NI-products again - and this time not directly over the internet but pretending I had to activate "from another computer". This generates files that just in case you had the same problem you should save and later send to the support. Strangely enough in my case ONE vsti, Kontakt2, doesn't deactivate itself...FM8, GR2-3, R5 do.

Laptop (HP Pavilion dv6770eg, AMD Turion64Bitx2, 2.20GHz, 3GB Ram, Vista home premium 32bit) is 10 days old but the shop won't take it back because it is no "hardware problem" = the laptop itself works, just with quite a few Vista-bugs.

External hardware in my case: Edirol UA 25 (as the old laptop was USB1.1); external USB2 hard drive, and for 4 weeks a umts internet card, a "web'n walk express card 4" that connects me to the internet in a veeery remote area.

So this sounds like an uncommon problem:-(. So this addition is not terribly useful, but who knows.

What I could do is get a XP and the drivers for the new laptop. and hoping it will work, or not using the laptop for music.

What I heartily recommend for any Vista-users that are not happy with the audio-performance is to shriek away from websites that recommend deactivating some of those 50+ background services Vista uses (XP had about 20). This has nothing to do with this problem, but what I read at tech-sites was partially nonsense and led to strange results people had to take back. Inded, the wish to reduce 50+ services is there, as you won't need half of them for an audio laptop...

cheerio. Feels a bit like in Windows95 times here;-). Thanks for the support, was fast and very friendly.

 

Hi, found your answer after posting. Yes, that sums it up. Installation itself seems fine for everything besides audio, and the hardware in itself seems without a flaw (hard drives and so on are new and work). If the laptop would be the problem I could give it back - now I can't. Well. Maybe SP1 for Vista, out March 15, which will fix 100+ bugs, will fix some incompabilities my laptop has. Or I just can't use this one for music.

EDIT: HP support (laptop is hp dv6770eg) said it's "3rd party problem", meaning NI. They recommend a fresh install (because of the mp3-listening crackles on the new machine, surely no NI problem). Of course the NI-deactivation is a NI-related problem, but the poor performance is not. Benchmark-tests and stuff are good, so I can't do anything.

Shop "support" refuses to take the laptop back in the 14days-period, because they take only laptops with not working HDDs or DVDdrives and such things.

 

Hi Klemperer, NI Techs,

I have just had the same experience with a Quad core desktop that was working perfectly after activation (for some months). Now, however, Kore 2, Massive, Reaktor 5, Guitar Rig 3 all report not activated and the Service Centre (crap) will not allow me to register and activate any of the above (the rest of Komplete 5 is OK - so far)?

WTF comes to mind, but it looks like a fault somewhere other than your system (I have done nothing to my kit to warrant any change in activation).

Regards,

Cayenne

 

Hello Klemperer and Cayenne,

I would like to investigate these activation issues some more. Basically we need some Activation Request File (also called Support File) from the time it was activated and another one after the de-activation happened. I can then check with our developers if they can find the reason for this change. If you have not such file from an earlier activation, you can also give me the rough date when the activation happened. You can send this with a ticket and ask the agent who works on it to assign this to me while pointing to this thread, or give me the ticket number you have received.

 

Hello Klemperer,

for your dropout problem I would check the following article in our knowledge base first:

http://www.native-instruments.com/knowledge/questions/136

Especially the network adapter mentioned there is a major source for audio dropouts on modern systems.

 

I have this problem as well. I bought Komplete in August of 07 and it's never activated correctly on my studio computer (dual MP athlon machine).

I spent WAY too much time trying to get this resolved, and still hold out hope that NI will fix their activation bug at some point. But, so far there has been no solution.

Like you, every other piece of software I own can activate without any sign of a problem. The NI software itself works fine, just the activation doesn't. My older NI stuff doesn't have problems at all- Reaktor4 and Absynth2. And strangely, Elektik Piano will stay activated, but nothing else.

NI's suggestion to me was to buy a new hard drive, which I did. A complete new system install, which I did. Etc., etc until they finally told me I should buy a new computer. My suggestion to them was to fix their activation software.

It's hard not to rant, but I really feel NI has basically ignored me and users like you. Good luck, I hope you don't get swept under the rug.

 

Hey Marius,

Any luck with this "AMD Bug?"

Would be great to get activated before the year mark hits.

 

Hi Guys,

I sent an Activation Request file (as asked for by Leopold@NI), and within seconds I received an .arf file which activate the 'rogue' software.

Can't get better than that when synths go bad!

Thanks NI,

C.

 

Where exactly did you send your activation request?

 

The link's in the .arf you generated on the machine needing activation. You open it on the computer that has net access.

http://www.nativeinstruments.de/index.php?id=activateoffline&L=1

ew

 

This is what was sent to me. I just followed the instructions....

et voila!

Quote..."

Please run your Service Center in Offline Mode (start Service Center, cancel the "checking internet connection" dialogue, then click "Next"). Proceed to the "Offline Activation Assistant" and click the "Export" button to save the "Activation Request File" (ARF) onto your computer.

Transfer the ARF to your online computer and click on it, your browser will open and you will be guided through the activation process. At the end of it you download an "Activation Return File". Transfer this back to your music computer and import it using the "Import" button in the "Offline Activation Assistant" to activate the software on your offline computer.

If there are problems, please zip the Activation Request File and send it to us.

Unquote

I did all this on my 'de-activated' computer as if it were off-line.

Hope this helps,

Keith

 

I'd never been asked to do that before, which is funny with the hours spent with Registration support.

I didn't get my hopes up... and that was good cause this didn't work for me.

Still not activated and no hope on the horizon. Piece of dung.

Someone from NI should just call me and fix this... keeping in mind that I've been through pretty much every scenario short of buying a new mainboard and processor.

 

I just had this happen to me! I activated yesterday T3 and today I just opened T3 and it said "need to activate"? And it said my AudioKontrol1 soundcard needed to be activated also? Who the hell activates hardware except Bill Gates? I have been going around with this software for months now between OS changes and activations.Looks like the soundcard works for now without activation?..Lets get it together boys.

Harry

 

Hi Harry,

the sound card activation is only required when you need to contact our technical support and do not have a different product to activate, otherwise you can ignore this. For the Traktor activation problem, please contact registration support with more information about your system.