I recently had a hard drive issue requiring a windows 10 reinstall, which initially didn't impact my biab installs which was on my drive d:\bb folder, but I was running out of space so I decided to reinstall on drive c:\bb after which I keep getting the activate popup message, so I enter my serial number but now I get the "You've reached the maximum allowed activation for this license" I've only installed and reinstalled on one other laptop but have used the special options for activation/deactivation under the utilities section of help, so to my knowledge I should have only 1 active install, my query is (1)How many active installs can I have? (2)How many active installs do I currently have? (3)Can I have these reset to 1?

I realize this may not be where I should post the above issue, I should go to PG Music's tech support, but I've had conversations through email with PGMusic's Tech Support, the only answer I have had so far was that it was easy to activate the program, just go to help section then choose activate and input my serial number then it will be activated, (I actually did this several times before I sent an email to techsupport) but I still got the same message pop up telling me I've maxed out the activation allowed for my license.

Has anyone experienced this? If you have can you share your experience and how this was resolved while I wait for tech support's reply?

Hello,

If this is regarding your Band-in-a-Box 2017 license, I double-checked and it looks like we have taken care of this already, perhaps since you posted here. Make sure that you also install the latest patch available for your version. Using the Live Chat is a fast way to get an issue like this resolved.

Thanks for the suggestion and for assuming that I didn't contact live chat before I posted here, in fact I wrote several emails and contacted live chat several times before I posted, which was a big mistake, as I should have looked at the opening hours of the live chat as well as email, coz I didn't realize that they were both closed on weekends and maybe public holidays, well my bad, yes I am happy and ecstatic that it was resolved, although, I am still waiting for the answer to my final question which I will speak to the live chat person about since I didn't receive a reply as of this moment. Once again thanks for the suggestion and the assistance.

In case this hasn’t been covered, each version of BIAB has three activations. They are not cumulative. You can, as you have learned, obtain more if you contact PG Music and explain. Did you also know you can deactivate a license on a machine, restoring your activations? You could do this to change from one computer to another, and even change back.

Just a heads up also, you can release activations yourself from older installations by going to Help | Utilities | Special Options | Release. Of course, if an old computer has crashes or something, this won't be possible. Just a FYI though

Deryk/Andrew
it would be extra nice if we could log into our PGMusic store account, and select a registered serial number and have the option to activate/deactivate a given activation; that way if my old laptop dies and I can't log into it to deactivate that one copy, I could at least go online and deactivate it without need for PGMusic support intervention
.. just a thought

win/win for all parties involved

Oh, you mean like other companies do it.

well, I was trying to be constructive but .. yeah

This would probably mean that the program would have to connect to a server each time you run it, so there are pros and cons.

In a due respect sir I have other music and photographic software programs that I can activate and deactivate when my system is on-line but most all of the time it is off-line and these programs work just fine.

Or do you mean that because of your code BiaB and RT would have to be on-line all of the time?

Well you can deactivate and activate Band-in-a-Box anytime while you are online and use it while offline. The topic I was referring to was specifically if your computer died and you didn't get a chance to deactivate it.

Thanx for clearing that up for me. I was way off base and in fact as I said my music computer is off-line and I can use BiaB and RT. I can be a real dummy at times and this was one of those many times!

I have one question. If have BiaB on two different computers. If one dies can I deactivate it with the other computer?

I'll take a whirl at that one. Since the activation is stored on the boot drive of the dead computer, I think the answer must be No. That's a good case for calling PG Music to explain why you need an additional activation.

I don't understand.
They obviously store the activations.
It would be a matter of them showing us our three activations, and letting us reset one of them.

If I reset the wrong one, I can easily reactivate it, but it would allow us to reset them. I don't see how 'constant online' would be needed at all. In my world, I could deactivate a license from a machine that never had BiaB/RB installed; it would be through my PGMusic account on whatever machine I wanted to log in on (including my phone).

concept:
3 activations listed in My Account
clues given: activation date and/or OS of activation (like I can obviously deactivate a RB activation for XP .. or maybe narrow it down to one of the two W7 activations .. or the one from 12/27/19 .. etc)
It wouldn't need RB to be online at all except to activate the desired machine after I deactivate the dead machine.

Like I said, just a suggestion.
It would save some user frustration and some PGMusic support time/effort.

I do like the idea of managing it through your account online. So in this system, couldn't someone (hypothetically) activate the program on a computer, deactivate it via their account, and then activate it on a second computer, and so have two copies of the program running but only have used one activation.

I suppose hypothetically, but at least it would be
1. someone who paid for it or has a legal copy in their account
2. someone you know the contact info for and could immediately halt if suspicious activity noticed (like they keep doing it repeatedly)
3. the deactivated machine could no longer install updates or RTs etc ..

Like many things in life, there's a certain amount of trust required
Again, just a suggestion.

Before we could answer the question, we would need to know how many times people need to increase the number of activations, and whether this is a chore for PG Music Support.

I just cloned my existing C-drive (250GB, with Win10 and all programs on it)to a 500GB M.2.
When restarting the PC almost everything worked fine except fot BBox 2020 - it says:
Too many activations --> where do I see this / how can I handle my activations?

Ref. to prev. post: unfortunately I forgot to deactivete one activation of my account
before I cloned my HD and then formatted it to use it as an additional data storage.

Contact us via live chat, and we can address this.
Edit - we've updated your account and you should be good now.

You're not the only one to do this! But look how nicely and quickly PG Music handled it.

Yes, the company support, understanding and tolerance is second-to-none. Remarkable, in fact.