Here is my scenario, hopefully come one can give me a straight up answer.

I have a desktop and and a laptop with BIAB 2021 installed on both of them at my house. I also have another laptop I keep at a getaway cabin I have. Therefore I have all 3 activations active.

I need to rebuild both my Desktop and Laptop as the OS is around 4 years old and they are showing signs of sluggishness. I am no stranger to reinstalling the OS from scratch. I have done it many times since my expertise in PC's goes all the way back to the early 1980's.

The concern is if I deactivate the installations, I won't be able to reinstall them back on the same computers since the hardware is not changing.

The dialog in BIAB says "Band-in-a-Box is activated with the serial number xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx. If you need to use this serial number to activate Band-in-a-Box on a different computer instead of this one, then you can De-Activated the program."

The key phrase is "different computer instead of this one"

Since they will be installed back to the SAME computers and not DIFFERENT computers, can I do this and successfully reactivate them?

Ideally, the process of deactivation will make them available for me to re-use again on the same PC's after the new OS install is completed on bot of them.

Also, my BIAB installation on a separate SSD drive in both PC's so the only footprint is the Activation Ticket in the Uses-Public-Ticket directory on the C Drives. Therefore, I won't have to go through the process of reinstalling 146 GB of data. I only need to worry about the Activation Ticket itself. I thought of just making a copy of the existing ticket on both PC's on a flash drive to placing it back when the OS's are reinstalled but I have no idea if that would work.

Thanks for any info you can provide on how to do this successfully.

Hello jcland, when you update or format your drive, Band-in-a-Box considers it a "new computer". So it is best to de-activate your serial number before you do anything to your computer drive. Then you can activate your Band-in-a-Box again after you rebuild your computer. You can go through the process of de-activating, then re-activating with the same serial number as many times as you need as long as you do not run out of total available activations.

If you need help with activation, you can phone us, get help from live chat, or emails sales@pgmusic.com

Thank Chantelle.

So the process is as follows in my instance, since I will NOT removing the existing BIAB install (142GB on the E Drive:

1. De-activate the existing install of BIAB
2. Format the C Hard Drive and Reinstall the Operating System on the C Hard Drive
3. Reinstall any other items such as BB Fonts, Coyote, VST stuff, Sforzando, DAW Plugin's, DX Plugin's and anything else that might crop up.
4. Run BIAB and re-activate via the internet with my existing serial # and everything should fall right into place.

That sounds like it should work fine. I'd suggest running the download manager as a step 5 just to make sure that everything is there.

jcland,

You may want to copy the bb folder onto a usb or external drive and then paste after you update the drive. That way you'll have any bonus content you may have collected in past years.

Jim, thanks for the tip but remember, I am not taking off the BIAB install since it is on my E Drive. I am only worried about the activation ticket which is in the User-Public-Ticket directory and yes I already keep a backup copy of the full install (142 GB) on a removable drive. Each update, I run it twice. Once to update the computer and the 2nd time to update the backup copy.

9-1-2021:

Getting ready to reinstall the OS from scratch, so I will be following the steps outlined from Chantelle and Simon at PG Music. Hopefully it will work just fine. Otherwise, they will be getting a call from me, if it fails, right after I try and reactivate BIAB 2021.

John,

Deactivate the current installation before you perform the clean install (Help > Deactivate). That frees up the activation for future use.

Then after you perform your clean Windows install you can load up Band-in-a-Box and go to (Help > Activate) to activate.

Please keep us in the loop about your progress! You are welcome to give us a call during our open hours if you need and one of our operators would be happy to assist.