Would changing out a drive help me activate my K4?

After this past weekend's very annoying authorization issues with a freshly installed K4 on a freshly installed Windows XP - Service Center is telling me my authorization profile has been de-activated (which it was - by me - on purpose), I was wondering if i could make a few small changes like popping in a new drive to have Service Center grant me a fresh authorization?

After reading about all the issues - and especially those that remarked how touchy Service Center was and how valid system id could change suddenly if the sun went down or a bird flew by - I was truly dumbfounded to see that my existing single K4 profile (I installed FM8 and Absynth 4 when received my DVDS in Nov) could actually be the same following a fresh install.

I always thought a fresh XP install and a fresh K4 install would certainly result in a new and unique ID.

So I figured - instead of waiting around for support to try and sus out the reasons that I was able to generate an identical system ID - maybe I should just switch a hard disk around or something so I can proceed with my install with a new ID?

Comments?

VP

 

Hiya VP,

From what I understand of how this system works, the 'unique ID' part of your registration is generated from serial numbers in the hardware of your PC. So reinstalling XP / K4 shouldn't have changed any of that.

I'd be interested to know whether changing out your non-Windows hard drive would change your machine ID or not.

That said, I would really recommend NOT deactivating any registrations at the moment. I figure SC is very broken, and if you can't 'undelete' a profile, why take the risk? If anything goes wrong, you'll be waiting at least two weeks for a response from NI about it...

 

It used to be that the date of Windows install contributed to the makeup of the hardware "fingerprint", and reinstalling Windows meant a new system ID. Perhaps this changed with the advent of Service Center.
Switching your OS disk should produce a new hardware fingerprint (it always used to), so that might be a viable solution. If you only had one K4 activation that should do it. Then you can straighten out the deactivated activation situation when you can reach registration support.

 

I think re-installing windows will give you a different system id.

Good luck.

 

I had 2 HD crashes and at the end of it all had 2 authorizations active for the same machine.

In my discussions with SC tech, they indicated we are actually able to have up to 3 concurrently active authorizations. The changing for me to a new HD ended up with me re-authorizing, even though the generated system ID was the same.

I hope any of the above helps.

 

I just re-installed Windows on a new hard disk and although Traktor 3 generated a new System ID, Komplete 4's is the same.

A bit annoying since I presumed I needed to kiil the K4 activation and did. Now I'm hoping and waiting for NI to re-activate that ID.

2 packages working totally differently in this respect.

 

well, they probably are always making changes and improving(subjectively) how the system works...it's not surprising that it might be different with different programs

 

Maybe not a surprise as such, but I still expected consistent behaviour.

 

Actually, it seems swapping a hard disk can be more of a nightmare than even I thought.

The activation system seems to get completely confused by it. As I mention in another thread. I think the bad logic goes like this:

It generates a new system ID which means the initial check for whether or not you're already authorised fails. That means you're expected to register a new set of hardware.

If you manage to deactivate what was the system ID (which is tied to your motherboard etc.) as a result, despite the ID actually being different, it won't let you add the new system because it thinks the ID is deactivated. Since the ID is different, you can't easily spot which was the original - which is a problem if you've had more than 1 IDs deactivated.

Brilliant eh?

So, I'm guessing the code that does the checking for already authorised takes the hard disk into account, whereas the code the checks to see if an ID is deactivated doesn't.

That's the way I think it's working anyhow, and why I still can't use K4 on my system after swapping out a broken hard disk last week.

 

Wll whatever this Control Center does, it's kind of a nightmare for the user. It seem VERY sensitive to ANY change in the system.