Well this is the scenario from hell if I ever saw one.

I just upgraded to BIAB 2024 last week, installed it and used one of my 3 activation's to get it going.

Well last night I walked over to my desktop to turn it on, not knowing that it actually was in a sleep mode. Well with 30% humidity in the room and after walking across the carpet you can only guess the ending.

The spark from my fingertip blew out the CPU and one of the SSD's (my E drive) that just happened to have an image of my C drive from 2 days earlier.

I was able to verify the CPU demise using an identical spare motherboard.

I had planned to upgrade this 13 year old dinosaur in 2024 anyways. In the meantime, I restored a 6 month old image to my standby laptop using a bare metal install and it works just fine.

Now the C drive from the desktop is intact so the Ticket in Users-Public-Ticket is just fine and has both the the 2023 and 2024 full tickets and bin files are there.

But I am sure I just wasted one of the activation's since the crash happened on the desktop PC

My next step is to copy my entire BB directory to the C drive in the laptop including the files in the ticket directory but I will bet even money after this is done, it will show a non-activated status and I will have to use a 2nd activation to get back in business.

Keep this in mind during the winter months with very low humidity. Watch for static electricity build up on your person. I keep a full room humidifier in the room for acoustic instruments but it had been off for a few hours and with the heat on, the humidity dropped to a dangerous level.

When sparks fly, electronics die.

I wonder if PG Music would restore the used and needlessly wasted activation for me for a XMAS present.

FYI - When our humidity gets low I use ACL Staticide. I spray it on my floor to stop static electricity. It really works.

https://www.amazon.com/ACL-Staticide-Regular-Topical-Anti-Stat/dp/B00BR55D5E?th=1

I live in Florida, the humidity is never low enough for static. But I do remember it from the years I spent touring in a road band.

I hope you haven't lost any important data.

Notes ♫

What is static?

Low humidity is like below 85% right?

This is a serious enough issue for me in northern New York that I keep a can of StaticGuard and hit the rug under my chair periodically.

This can be an expensive problem during the Winter in cold climates as you are unfortunately finding out.

I like a "belt and suspenders" approach intended to prevent dry skin and in the bargain we've never had an ESD electronics failure.

Our first line of defense is a 5.6 gallon AirCare humidifier. I don't trust the adjustable humidistat for "automatic control" so it runs on a low fan speed continuously 24/7 in the Winter.

Our second line of defense is 2 stainless steel pots maintained with water that live on top of the wood stove. The hotter the stove, the higher the moisture output. This automatic control I trust.

The third line of defense is a small Honeywell cool mist humidifier suitable for a single room.

Years ago I figured out the one-time adjustments for all 3 for zero condensation on the windows.

I do have a 5.6 gallon AirCare which you can see in the picture but I don't have a wood stove. I also have a small cool mist which I will pull out for the bedroom.

Looking in the bright side, there was nothing important on the SSD that went out and it is under warranty so I already have a RMA in progress to return it. AND I was planning to upgrading to a new system after having this old one for over a decade in January anyways. The only bummer is the fact that I lost 1 of my 3 activation's for the 2024 Upgrade and that was after only enjoying it for around 4 days. That's the bummer.

I'm sure that if you contact PGM and tell them what happened they will deactivate that computer.

Yes, contact them. I recovered one activation after a hard drive crash.

The fastest way calendar wise would likely be to use the Live Chat feature and explain your situation.

You still have two activation's left so you are probably not in that much of an emergency situation (thus emailing Support may be fine), but I concur with others; there is a good chance the Activation will be handled by support with little fuss .. the first time anyway.

If you try that a few times I suspect it would raise eyebrows though

In other words, I'd consider that the least of your worries right now.

For some reason, in my old memory, I *think* there is a way for you for you to deactivate a license in your PGMusic Store account yourself, but I couldn't provide detail .. I just seem to remember that there was a way.

I will contact them today, probably via chat since it is Saturday, and see if they will deactivate that computer for me.

I never realized living in humid, coastal Florida was an advantage until now.

I have a dehumidifier.

Notes ♫

Well all and all it wasn't a total disaster at all. I got hold of PGMusic on the chat line on Saturday and they sorted the activation loss for me and was able to "deactivate" the now dead machine so I am back to square one on that. Kudos to PGMusic and their support team. Can't say enough for them.

I rebuilt my HP Envy DV7 laptop from scratch and now have it mirrored to the way my Desktop machine was and cabled my 27" monitor via a HDMI cable so my 70+ year old eyes wont be the next to go.

The big task is deciding which Motherboard, CPU, memory, fan and case I need to get. Any suggestions are welcomed. Since this build I am hoping will last another 10+ years, I need need to chose wisely, as they said in Indiana Jones movie.

Since I build my own, pcpartpicker.com was suggested to me and since I live equal distance from Kansas City and St Louis, MicroCenter has been visited by me many times before.

With 20+ CPU's and 50+ MB's to chose from, the end choice would be decided by both budget and reliability factors. Since I am an old AMD fan, I tend to lean towards them.

I am not really a gamer and tend to more productivity activities such as audio and video editing. Been looking into AI software that can separate old mono recordings into separate tracks so you can re-combine them into true stereo and that takes a fairly powerful processor.

And of course, one of the items will be purchasing then will be a anti-static wrist strap and mat.

PG Music has always handled this fairly.

While I built all my PCs starting in 1983, I hired a local business to build the last one. There were too many changes I wasn’t familiar with, like NVMe m 2 drives. But I did specify what I thought was most important for digital audio especially BIAB, and the priority is as follows:

CPU speed
CPU cores
Storage drive speed
Storage drive capacity
Sufficient RAM
Graphics
Onboard audio