Software Activation Issues

 
If you encounter any issue pertaining to software activation, here are some common FAQ's:

1. I have more than one license, but I can't activate my second (or third) license;
2. My software throws an Expired License error before I had a chance to activate it.
3. My software was activated correctly before, but all of a sudden
   
   1. it throws an Invalid License Error, OR
   2. it shows as Trial version at the bottom.
4. IE starts popping up errors saying "Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site" OR "Runtime Error has occurred" and then a full screen of "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage".
5. All of a sudden I am seeing a ASPPlayground.NET copyright notice popup whenever I visit the forum.

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You have more than one license

In order to activate the license, you need to have your URL registered in our license DB. You can do so easily using the Home Page field in your support forum profile if you have only one license. If you have more than one license, than you need to do either of the following:

• Associate the additional order ID with your existing license holder account by sending me an email (admin AT aspplayground . net) with your new order ID. And once the account is associated, click to open the License Manager and you can manage the order ID's and their intended URLs.
  
  • license holder account: an approved account that can access our private support forums (account is a member of our license holder group).
• Send me an email (admin AT aspplayground . net) with the new order ID and the intended URL(s).

Invalid or Trial copyright notice

A valid license file can become Invalid or Trial for 3 reasons:

1. The license file is altered;
2. The license file is for a different URL;
   1. This could happen when you use an already activated forum on a different URL.
3. The license file is for a different machine (software will become Trial version in this case).
   1. This could happen when you move an already activated forum to a different machine.

In order to get the software back and running, you will need to

1. (Invalid / Expiration error only) Download this trial license file (this file is only available when you are logged in with an account that has a license registered under it), and upload it to your ~/upfiles/ directory so that the software will come back to life again (no longer throwing errors);
2. Use Option 1 on the Software Activation page of your Admin CP to generate a new validation code,
3. Click to open the License Manager and follow the instruction to update your license record;
   
   1. NOTE: once the licensing db is updated, your old settings will no longer work. This means if you do this because you moved to a different machine, the software on the old machine will not function anymore.
4. Once you have updated the licensing db, you can then re-activate your license (w/ Option 1 or Option 2).
   1. If you have trouble activating the software using Option 2, you will need to make sure your ~/upfiles folder permission is set up correctly. See this link for more info.
5. Note: If you are planning to use the software in a Web Farm setting (more than one web server), you will need to purchase a license for each of your machine.

Copyright notice popups

For versions before 3.9:

Both of these 2 problems are due to incorrect forum folder permission. We require (no exceptions) one sub folder, ~/upfiles/, to be fully "modifiable" (read / write / delete / create folder; NTFS permission name: Modify) in order to run many built-in operations in the software, and this includes software activation.

The folder permission setting is detailed in the installation guide (readme file that comes with the download package), but you may need to re-apply such permission if you move your software to a different server.

Take a look on how to set up the correct permission for this folder, ~/upfiles/.

The good thing with this type of pop up error is that you don't have to go through me to correct this problem, since all your licensing settings are still valid. It is just that your software cannot receive our licensing response correctly.

To eliminate these error popups immediately, download this trial license file (this file is only available when you are logged in with an account that has a license registered under it), and upload it to your ~/upfiles/ directory.

• For version 3.9 users, go to your Admin CP -> Software Activation, and Import the license file.

Once the software is running correctly in trial mode, go to your Admin CP -> Software Activation, and use Option 1 to re-activate the software.

However, you will still need to get the folder permission corrected to prevent such issues popping up again in the future. To check you have correctly set the permission, try Option 2 in Admin CP -> Software Activation, and see if the "License Last Validated" flag updates. If not, then you don't have the permission correctly set or propagated.