New Premium License Will Not Activate

Posted by: @softraid-support

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@nomatterhowgood 

Its a modestly small dialog box, with the title, "Activate Serial Number Offline"

In my case it simply does not appear. I have had a subscription to Softraid premium for the past year. I kept getting warnings that the subscription would end on April 4. So I bought another year. That’s when things went haywire. On advice I fully uninstalled Softraid and ran disk first aid out of Disk Utility and everything checked out perfectly. Then I reinstalled the latest version of Softraid off the web site and I now have a trial version that I can’t register. I’m essentially paying $79 for a years worth of Softraid standard because it won’t activate or take my serial number without that error message. I’ve been at this for 6 days with no resolution this far. Your help has been the most encouraging I have received. I thank you so much for that. 

I have the exact same issue.

I have a brand new install 10.15 Mac Pro, I installed SoftRAID 8.5. I purchased a Premium license ( I have 2 others from a PCIE cards I purchased, might have been a bad idea if I can't get a working RAID system). I was forced into a Trial because the Serial would NOT activate.

This is VERY FRUSTRATING.

1. My computer is connected to the internet.

2. Nothing is blocking activation.

3. I have tried uninstalling/reinstalling, the whole Recovery Disk Utility remove thing, no dice. Still get the activation error.

I do NOT want to do the new partition APFS install baloney. That's insane and no software should require that. 

4. I have all my RAID drives setup, but I do NOT want to redo them nor have issues like this in the future and I don't want to lose all my work.

5. I just want my software that I paid for to work on this single computer. Period. End of story. I paid big bucks for these RAID PCIE cards and

your software WILL NOT activate. It's a HUGE problem. 

Please help...

@meltoots 

Did you try deactivating ethernet and wifi, and trying manual activation? (You should get prompted when you try to enter your serial)

The thread where I asked user to do a clean install was to demonstrate that it was a problem in their system, only.

none of this has to do with your existing volumes. Your system is blocking SoftRAID from talking to the activation server, why I do not know.

Let me know if manual works.

I'll try it, but how does this work with the subscription model? It's a brand new install. What possibly could be blocking it?

There is no antivirus on it btw. Its as clean as it could be.

After manual, I do have to put it back on the network, so will that be an issue?

@meltoots 

We do not understand the cause yet. We had a user willing to send us a system to investigate, but when I got it, he did not actually do the backup, unfortunately. My guess is there is a block in some plist. What we are doing is straightforward, just contacting our license server to check if the license is valid, then enabling it locally.

The manual activation works. It is designed for systems "off line", which is common in a lot of video production environments. After activation, you can enable networks as normal.

OK After doing the following...

1. It would not activate on my cell hotspot instead of network. So its not a network issue.

2. It would not activate after a Recovery and reinstall of the 10.15 MacOS. Same error.

3. It WOULD install on a completely clean install of 10.15 on a wiped clean external HD. So I tried to copy my SoftRAID app from that clean HD install

to my main HD, replace it, and it still says I'm in a trial. So how do I move the necessary files/folders (which ones) from my clean external install

to my main HD? Its not just the app, it must be some hidden files or support files. 

@meltoots 

Its some kind of plist, we think, that is blocking this. DId you try "manual activation"? What I am curious about is if you disable internet, if you get the dialog box pop up when you try to activate offering manual activation.

We had a case on the forum, where that dialog box was not appearing at all.

I don't want to do manual, because I need this to activate thru the internet activation in the future for my subscription, I have no idea how a "manual" install will work with a subscription model you have on this.

So I need this internet activation figured out. I tried moving the files from the clean to the my main HD, including the invisible files. it did not work.

Here a list of everything I installed:

Adobe Acrobat Reader

AnyDesk

CarbonCopyCloner

Hazel

LogMeIn

Parallels

PowerManager

SuperDuper!

Teamviewer

On the new clean install, I installed EACH of the above applications, before each install, I Deactivated SoftRAID and Re-Activated the software after the install. None of the apps I installed interfered with that. So Im not sure about this plist issue.

So after the full clean install, then softRAID, I reinstalled all my apps. Then erased my main HD and then duplicated my clean drive back to my main HD.

And so far, it appears that SoftRAID is activated and all good. 5 hours later, this is what we have to go through to activate it. 

Not since the early 2000's do I recall such a hostile activation routine. Maybe its time to look into that.

@meltoots 

Its not going to be a standard app or preference. Something dealing with security more likely. 

All the manual process does is use a QR code from a cell phone to talk to the server, and give an activation code to your computer.

I wish I knoew what triggers this. We need someones System to test, however, as we don't know and I cannot find any specific installed app as a likely candidate.

Posted by: @softraid-support

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@meltoots 

Its not going to be a standard app or preference. Something dealing with security more likely. 

All the manual process does is use a QR code from a cell phone to talk to the server, and give an activation code to your computer.

I wish I knoew what triggers this. We need someones System to test, however, as we don't know and I cannot find any specific installed app as a likely candidate.

I will be sending a clone of my system as soon as I get the OK from tech support. OWC sent me a drive and I followed their instructions and backed up ti Time Machine. I really hope this does the trick. 

Posted by: @softraid-support

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@meltoots 

We do not understand the cause yet. We had a user willing to send us a system to investigate, but when I got it, he did not actually do the backup, unfortunately. My guess is there is a block in some plist. What we are doing is straightforward, just contacting our license server to check if the license is valid, then enabling it locally.

The manual activation works. It is designed for systems "off line", which is common in a lot of video production environments. After activation, you can enable networks as normal.

”The manual activation works”. It doesn’t for me. I have been waiting forever. Still no fix. I’m sending in a clone of my drive for the engineers to look at it and hopefully fix it. They won’t give me a refund either. So I’m paying a for a subscription to software the for me does not activate. 

@meltoots I have been waiting forever 3 months for this problem to be fixed. I’m paying a subscription for something that won’t activate on my Mac. I cloned my drive per instructions given to me by tech support. Once I get the OK after they look at a screencap of the backup I sent them i will mail the cloned drive out to them. They sent me the drive a coupe of days ago. One thing about tech support for Softraid. They used to have phone tech support. Now it’s just email only. When you ask a question via email you may wait for hours for a response. Then you ask a follow up and there’s a few more hours. This can go on and on. Especially when you’re like me and not an expert at all about these things. They talk to me at times like I’m a computer wizard when in reality I have no idea what they are saying. They know it cold but regular, everyday average person probably doesn’t have a clue what they are saying. I’ve been using Thunderbay RAID 5 for 10 years. Never had a problem except for normal things like replacing a drive. Until this never ending problem. Softraid is the only game I. Town for Mac RAID 5 as far as I can see. So if this doesn’t work I have several thousand dollars invested in Thunderbay units that don’t have the a full Softraid app to monitor them. This is one bizarre situation that seems to me like it’s dead last on the priority list.

@nomatterhowgood 

OWC still has telephone support, but your case is being handled by the top support engineer, which is email only. Your problem is pretty much one of a kind, which is why we need to be able to reproduce it to be able to figure out what is happening and fix it.

We are trying as best we can.

Posted by: @softraid-support

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@nomatterhowgood 

OWC still has telephone support, but your case is being handled by the top support engineer, which is email only. Your problem is pretty much one of a kind, which is why we need to be able to reproduce it to be able to figure out what is happening and fix it.

We are trying as best we can.

And I will be eternally grateful when you fix it. I thank you for doing this. I am very curious what the issue turns out to be.