bought pro...OK till I had to replace Motherboard Battery

**dudelsack** · 20 December 2006, 07:31 AM

Tried the support...still no answer...maybe one of you knows what to do.

Bought and installed the download of Pro...all went well for a couple of days, till my battery on the motherboard went "south" and the clock on the computer started to give up the ghost. Bought a battery and switched them out, ran the computer back up and all other programs worked wonderful......
except that now the pro version won't load up and I get a message telling me the download has expired and I need to install the program from the CD that I naturally don't yet have to install from. Must be some kind of registery entry that tells the program it has expired.....

How can I reset this? Know Xara won't want to let me in on how to reset an expired download as this would let everyone just reset and reset till the cows come home....

If one of you Gurus have the trick...please do me a private mail and get me on the road to getting what I have paid for. I could wait until forever to get this info from Xara....or at least have to wait till the CD comes out, and we know that may take longer than we all hope...

Thanks!

**haakoo** · 20 December 2006, 07:35 AM

If you bought the pro version,you've got a liscense number
so download pro again,unlock with your number,done

**dudelsack** · 20 December 2006, 07:40 AM

tried this twice....erased all of Pro from the computer, re-downloaded, reinstalled and it gives me the fail message before I even get to the screen where you can fill in the numbers and password stuff....after a couple of times...this seems to be a no-go....

**haakoo** · 20 December 2006, 08:03 AM

http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthread.php?t=22813

Maybe post your request here,it's the official helpdesk of xara

**dudelsack** · 20 December 2006, 08:22 AM

Have done this...4 days ago, under submit a ticket, I think....no answer as yet...but I do see it noted in my personal section of the website...so they may answer soon. Just that I would naturally like to get this thing on the road as quickly as possible, and with the Christmas holidays......well...I just hoped someone could help me if I asked....and maybe that will happen! Thanks!

**AntonyF** · 20 December 2006, 08:23 AM

dudelsack,

We've never come across this one before, because this doesn't tend to happen much! I'm afraid it's not possible to unlock the trial. And as you note, it thinks it's expired. The only thing you can do in this circumstance is wait for the CD. Sorry.

**dudelsack** · 20 December 2006, 09:01 AM

That this doesn't happen often...we all know. Be happy it doesn't. But it happened due to something that I had to correct, the battery level was so low that the clock was not funtioning any more, so I had to do it.....even if it had wiped the computer clean...which it didn't, I happy to say.
But there is some notation in my computer that tells this program it has expired. That this message is on the computer, is evident because I have erased and re-downloaded the Pro a couple of times, and each copy reacts to what it sees on my computer and boycots running up. So something is on my computer telling it to do that. If this "message" is gotten rid of...then the program will go again into action and do it's thing. I just need someone to point out where and what to get rid of to give this program a clean start.

The only other possiblity is that Xara records the IP address of the computers that try to start this program and the program checks with Xara before running up and loading the program. Big brother, big time. I kind of doubt this, as then you would have to have internet connection to just use the program....and not all of us run constantly "online". But if this is the case, that would then be something that Xara could reset in their server...and they would have to do that, I can't....so I need them to respond to my trouble ticket so we can work something out.

There IS a solution, and I've not done anything wrong, but rather everything I had to do, correctly, to purchase the use of this program....so they will surely have to help get this corrected. Waiting till the CD comes out.....shouldn't have to be...or?

**AntonyF** · 20 December 2006, 10:16 AM

The thing is that if people could download and keep on resetting a download version then it would just increase the piracy of our product which (and most software houses are in the same house) is already rife.

So we cannot give out the information to reset your system, and to be honest I wouldn't know how to do it anyway because it's difficult for a reason.

Having to install from the CD is a security measure and doesn't normally affect people. I know it's not your fault, but a motherboard battery dying is so rare that we can't anticipate that outcome. The program just saw the date change, thought your time was up and has expired itself.

So the only way is to wait for the CD, I'm sorry.

**tellurian** · 20 December 2006, 06:48 PM

Originally Posted by BobInce

It happened to me with X1 as well. Very annoying, and I can't see any good reason to have a *purchased* demo version expire at all.

I agree - it would probably only take a few lines of code to disable the expire thing, when the program is unlocked.

I recently had a similar problem with another program which suddenly went into expired mode after I had registered it, and unintalling and reinstalling didn't help. Their support claimed it was en error on my system, probably to avoid revealing how to remove the trial information. So the only solution was to reinstall Windows.

Luckily I had an image of my system from before the program was installed, so I just reverted to that, reinstalled the program, and all was fine again.

I can only advise to make an image of your system whenever you make changes to it. It only takes a few minutes, and if something goes wrong you just revert to the image you made before the changes. This has saved me a lot of time and trouble, over the years.

Also, when you build a system from scratch, make successive images of it regularly during the build process, adding a few programs at a time and then making a new image, plus a list of what you have installed of new stuff in each image. If something goes wrong, you just revert to the latest image you made, and start over from there.

It's also handy for tracking down certain problems. For example, recently I discovered a problem with USB on my system which I couldn't track down the cause of. I then reverted to previous images, one by one, until the problem disappeared. Then I knew it was one of the programs or drivers I had installed right after, in the next image, and then by checking the list of new programs installed in that image I could reinstall them one by one, until the problem reappeared, and then I had the culprit.

A very nice system image program (I use it myself) is Image for DOS, it's very easy to use, very fast and reliable, and cost very little:

http://terabyteunlimited.com/image.html

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**Soquili** · 20 December 2006, 07:03 PM

Dudelsack if you are running Windows XP and haven't disabled system restore, you could restore to a point before the battery died.

That should correct the expired problem. Any changes you made to your system, programs installed, etc that occured after the restore point you would have to reinstall.

It is a good idea to make a restore point just before making system or hardware changes, just as a precaution.