Unable to (re)activate Web Designer Premium V12 (or load V15)

[Paul W]

I've already contacted Xara Support, but I thought I'd check here if someone might have a solution for the issue I have having with Web Designer Premium.

I have been using V12 with close to no problems for more than a year and decided today to try to upgrade to V15. I paid for the upgrade a few months ago, but had not done yet. When I ran the V15 download software it did nothing. Thus, I thought I needed to remove V12 which I did and still received the same result of nothing happening when the V15 program was run.

I removed everything and reinstalled the V12 software. The program appears to have installed with no problem, but when I enter my authorization code I end up with "Error Code: -1" and to contact Xara Support (which I have done).

I've spent too much time today trying to troubleshoot this, so I'm hoping that Xara Support comes through or perhaps someone here might have an idea what is keeping the activation code from working.

Thanks,
Paul

[Acorn]

Paul, the only suggestion I have is right-click and pick Run as administrator.

Does the program run in trial mode at all, without registration?
Have you rebooted your machine from cold?

Acorn

[handrawn]

nd you could try redownloading in case the ver 15 instaler is corrupted

[Paul W]

Paul, the only suggestion I have is right-click and pick Run as administrator.

Does the program run in trial mode at all, without registration?
Have you rebooted your machine from cold?

Acorn

I thought about Run as Administrator too and tried that with no success. The program will not run in trial mode at all because it says I've used up the trial time. Also rebooted the machine from cold too. I can't think of anything else to try, but I really appreciate your response, Acorn.

I did get a response from Xara overnight with these directions which I had found earlier. I'm going to post them here in case someone else needs them.

Paul


The online activation can result in the error code -1 being returned when attempting to register and activate Xara. The following solutions will resolve the problem in the majority of cases.

A) Please initially ensure you are connected to the Internet. An online connection is required to activate the software. Check your firewall settings to ensure it is not preventing the Xara program from accessing the Internet. The program uses port 443 ssl. This is the default port for HTTPS/SSL ( the default port which is used when you complete online purchases via a secure server).

B) Customers on Windows 7 have reported this error when MS Windows 7 Speech Recognition is enabled. Disabling this will prevent the problem from occurring.

C) The program uses the Internet Explorer API for the online communication modules. Please go to the system's Control Panel and proceed to ""Internet Options"". Switch to the ""Advanced"" tab and find the ""Security"" section in the long list of checkboxes. Among other things you will find entries for the different Internet communication protocols here. Please check whether the options TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2 are
ticked. If that is not the case, please enable/tick these options and confirm your settings.

D) A crucial operating system service that should be running by default may have been disabled. In order to check this, please bring up the Windows ""Computer Management"", e.g. by opening the Windows Start menu, right-clicking on ""Computer"" and choosing ""Manage"". In the Computer Management screen, navigate to the ""Services and Applications"" section on the left-hand side and proceed to the ""Services"" sub section. Find the ""Background Intelligent Transfer Service"" in the alphabetic list of services and check whether the status for this service is ""started"". If not, right-click on this entry and start/resume it. Then try the program activation again.

E) if the above solutions do not help then please try reinstalling the program. Ensure you disable any security based software prior to reinstalling.

[Paul W]

nd you could try redownloading in case the ver 15 instaler is corrupted

I had that thought too and downloaded a fresh copy from the website for both V12 and 15. V12 won't activate and V15 won't even download the full program.

All this makes me think I have an unknown issue with my computer. Thanks for the idea though!

Paul

[handrawn]

the full program is not downloaded - you get an installer 'stub' which downloads the full program during installation - and therefore you need to be connected to the internet during installation - and therefore this piece of advice Ensure you disable any security based software prior to reinstalling. is a really bad idea, unless the previously downloaded full program is cached somewhere on your computer so you can disable the internet connection whilst 'the securitity based software' is disabled, and they don't say anything about doing that

It would be better to review the security software settings, or even change program temporaly [using a trial maybe?]

Certainly review your security softwre settings as well as all the rest; I cannot believe that in this day and age companies are advising their users to disable any security software as if that were a matter of little consequence - what do they think it is for?

and if I am being pedantic I notice they don't even advise/tell you to re-enable it again immediately after installation - who writes this stuff I wonder? - not anyone bothered about security issues I would suggest... still it's not their computer at risk, is it

[Paul W]

I completely agree with your take 'handrawn.'

Long story short, I have V12 running now. Xara responded that they had a server issue and had reset my account, but that didn't completely solved it. After many days I tracked it down to a file missing in my Windows network set up. While I was connected to the internet, the network did not think that was the case and thus neither did Xara because it is relying on the computer to tell it if the internet is available and not actually pinging to find out. With a refresh of the system and upgrade to Windows 10 everything is working again.

Thanks again to everyone who offered suggestions. Hopefully this thread helps someone in the future.

Paul

[Acorn]

I completely agree with your take 'handrawn.'

Long story short, I have V12 running now. Xara responded that they had a server issue and had reset my account, but that didn't completely solved it. After many days I tracked it down to a file missing in my Windows network set up. While I was connected to the internet, the network did not think that was the case and thus neither did Xara because it is relying on the computer to tell it if the internet is available and not actually pinging to find out. With a refresh of the system and upgrade to Windows 10 everything is working again.

Thanks again to everyone who offered suggestions. Hopefully this thread helps someone in the future.

Paul

Paul, I'm glad you've reconnected. If you have a second machine, download and register v12 on it as well.

When done, download and install v15 without uninstalling v12. You should be able to run both together.

Best wishes,
Acorn

[Paul W]

Paul, I'm glad you've reconnected. If you have a second machine, download and register v12 on it as well.

When done, download and install v15 without uninstalling v12. You should be able to run both together.

Best wishes,
Acorn

Once I catch back up with clients I will do just that. Thanks for the idea on how to approach V15. I still have V12 on that second computer right now.

[handrawn]

good to hear its sorted