It's not "ranting and raving" when it's just stating the facts.  I know of no other company as anal as Magix when it comes to this issue.  This instance was not even a reinstall.  My hard drive crashed and I had to replace it.  I backup my system with Norton Ghost, so I just restored my Ghost image.  When I tried to run ACL, I got an error message that I needed to reinstall or repair because their was a problem with the program.  After the repair, I had to activate, which led to the denial.  This happened the first time I ever reinstalled ACL and happened when I replaced a drive before and restored the backup.  No other programs have this problem when I do the restore and I have no idea why ACL should be affected.  Why you would have to do an activation when you do a repair is complete nonsense and very poor administration or programming.

Other software vendors have a much cleaner and easier method of activating when you have had a number of reinstalls and I know this because I have been building systems for a long time and am constantly upgrading my own system and testing programs for others so I change drives, mobos, memory quite often and do a lot of restores as well as reinstalling at least once a year to clean up the system from all the activity.  This type of harassment (and I consider it just that) is uncalled for.  As I said, I will just spend my money elsewhere and surely will no longer recommend Magix products to anyone (and I get a lot of questions as to what products I recommend).

Hi

. . . . when it's just stating the facts . . .

That is an opinion not facts.

As I said in my previous post there are many software companies, and I gave examples of two, which have  activation processes for protection of their intellectual property and that is something you have to accept.

Email Magix and ask for the activation counter reset.

Many activation codes are generated from hardware ID's and I think Magix programs use these.  In which case when you clone to a new hard drive then you will have to reactivate as the hardware ID has changed and the old activation code is invalid.

Microsoft Windows uses the same method of creating a unique machine id code from using hardware id's for their activation process.

John

Your examples don't hold water since I have Adobe CS and MS Office on this same system (as well as Nero which also requires activation) and none of them present the problems that Magix does, so don't keep using them as examples.  Also, when they do need contact for activation they are more readily available and make the process simple. Again, they only do this on a reinstall (and no longer just for a drive change).

You keep insisting I e-mail Magix (which I have done before), but you have to contact sales and on this site there is no longer a link that let's you contact sales.  The only e-mail they have is for tech support and they want $12.99 for that.  All they have is phone contact and business hours that don't include weekends, which is understandable, but not a solution right now. You can defend all you want (apparently without real knowlege of how the other vendors handle activation problems) but the FACT is that Magix makes it irritatingly difficult and does so in unnecessary circumstances.

The only contact I've found which is indicated as sales is actually customer service.  I have sent an e-mail and have tried calling.  No reponse to the e-mail (sent last weekend but includes 3 business days).  They do no answer their phones, just let it ring for a long time and then say they're too busy and call back later (not even choice to leave a callback number).

So, if you are so supportive of them, maybe it's because you have a better method of contacting sales and I would sure like to have it.  The only number I found was 1-305-722-5810 and for sales I found the e-mail module by doing a google search because I could not find it otherwise on the site. There used to be a link on the site that was specifically for activation (which in itself indicates it is a common problem) but I can no longer find it. All it is for activation now is for codecs.

hi, i am having a similar problem with my cleaning lab 2014 program. it says i have to check the license for some reason. then when i click check now it says it can't activate it and gives me an error code -29, usually when i email magix support they always have helped me but this time nothing is working and the last time i tried to contact the web site says my program is old and i have to buy a voucher in order to send another support request. kind of fucking annoying since i have paid for this software and it was working fine until they want this license valadation again which they don't even have the courtesy to tell me why this is so i'm with you and i will NEVER buy another magix product. your so right there are other options out there so magix can go and F__K themselves. good luck brother, peace and love, james glynn... jamesglynn@optonline.net

What must I do to be "allowed" to run this (not cheap) software? I PAID for it, Why can I NOT Register it? Why can I NOT Get any answers??