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OT - Cannot register software after computer crash

ewlsey

Diamond
Joined
Jul 14, 2009
Location
Peoria, IL
So, my computer crashed and I had to reinstall Windows and start over. I basically use only 3 software programs, Office, Quickbooks, and Solidworks. These were all purchased legally 3 years ago along when I bought the computer. They have worked fine until now.

I reinstalled Solidworks and activated the license and it works just fine.

I tried to install Office. It will not accept my product key. Called Microsoft. They say my key is flagged as pirated because it has been used more than 15 times to register Office. Nothing I can do. I have proof of purchase. Microsoft says try the company you bought it from but they won't help me.

Tried to install Quickbooks. Worked fine for 30 days. Then I tried to register the software. Called the number. They tell me it's registered to another business. Once again, nothing they can do.

I bought this stuff from a company called Software Speedy and did it all online. At that time they were well reviewed and everything seemed legitimate. Today their website is gone and there is little trace of them.

Is there anything I can do short of buying new software? This is going to cost me $300-400.
 
Yep, LIBRE OFFICE, exactly like microsoft, but free, even written by some of the same people (at least some of it!) Can't help on the others.
 
Yeah I can get around the Office issue because my wife is a teacher and has free access through her school. Not strictly legal I suppose, but I did pay for it...

Quickbooks is the real sticker.
 
I can't help you this time around but to avoid this type of problem in the future make a backup image of your hard drive once you get all the programs installed and working how you like it. Next time it crashes you can then re-image your hard drive and you are back in business without having to re-install programs.
 
The trade I work in, building automation, has had some issues just from windows updates that cause what is called the "Host ID" of the front end computer to change. Since the host ID is what is referenced by the software license it thinks it's on a different computer and will not start after a reboot. This has been mostly a win 7 issue, we'll see about 10. Sometimes a patch is offered by the automation software Mfg or Windows...sometimes not. If not, the customer, who has the immediate need to "see" there system again will buy the license transfer, which is not to expensive, just get it done. The controllers in the system dont care about the front end UNLESS some manual commands are required from it or a schedule change is needed (their software is proprietary), otherwise it will function as programmed and follow the schedules previously programmed. If I were the customer I would fight and scream, but the blame game begins. Finger pointing and name calling are the menu du jour until the issue is put to bed, but woe I am but a lowly tech and don't have much of a say in the matter. I just take the heat and hope my customer skills are up to the task.

JR
 
So, my computer crashed and I had to reinstall Windows and start over. I basically use only 3 software programs, Office, Quickbooks, and Solidworks. These were all purchased legally 3 years ago along when I bought the computer. They have worked fine until now.

I reinstalled Solidworks and activated the license and it works just fine.

I tried to install Office. It will not accept my product key. Called Microsoft. They say my key is flagged as pirated because it has been used more than 15 times to register Office. Nothing I can do. I have proof of purchase. Microsoft says try the company you bought it from but they won't help me.

Tried to install Quickbooks. Worked fine for 30 days. Then I tried to register the software. Called the number. They tell me it's registered to another business. Once again, nothing they can do.

I bought this stuff from a company called Software Speedy and did it all online. At that time they were well reviewed and everything seemed legitimate. Today their website is gone and there is little trace of them.

Is there anything I can do short of buying new software? This is going to cost me $300-400.

LibreOffice may work for you - I've used it since days when I ordered it from Star in Hamburg and had to learn German for the menus, still use its 'grandchild'.

It has improved, is still not a perfect match for the MSO junque. Mind - it is often BETTER, but you don't care.

If you use MS Office to generate quotes or invoices, test those and any macros and templates FIRST.

Quickbooks I have always run on a 'VM'. Too much commerce was at stake to want to worry about which hardware or OS was functioning or not that hour, day, or year.

My 1990's Version still works today, any machine or OS. It thinks it is on Windows NT4, SP3.

Suggest you buy new, install it that way, to whatever Win license you own. And trust.

Make 'mirrors' of the images periodically to camera flash, USB, whatever.

After which you can run it on Win, Lin, Unix, Mac, and no longer have to care about OS rev levels or license keys, ever again. Isolate it 100% from any networking, security issues matter not, either. NB; We always strip Win to bare-bones. Nothing left of it but what the specific app uses. No multimedia, games, browsers, utilities, drivers.... NADA. Runs blitz-quick that way, and for tens of years w/o viri or crashes.

One doesn't even have to 'shut down' the app or the virtual machine running it. Just 'freeze' it in place. Next use, it opens in the same place last used. Which has a value of its own.

MS Office can be run that way as well, but is seldom as "Mission Critical" as QB.

Solidworks? Above my current pay grade. I would expect it to be demanding enough of resources to want 'bare metal' access to the hardware, not virtualization.

Fortunately, you don't yet have to care.

Lots of folk on PM do Virtualization as part of Day Job. Specific advise on NEW versions should be along shortly.

Bill
 
I know quick books has a monthly service now. Might be something to look into versus buying the whole thing.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk
 
I know quick books has a monthly service now. Might be something to look into versus buying the whole thing.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

We stayed with the '90's version partly because they had just STARTED to "network enable" the newer ones. Don't care HOW reputable or trustworthy a 'turd' party they may have been, then or now.

Our Company Books were not going to have to worry about the risk of improper access.

History - Major banks, retailers, Government Agencies - hasn't been all that kind since to folk who've used cloud and shared services, even when careful. Don't have their deep pockets. Don't need their risks.

Bill
 
Are you using quickbooks for payroll? If so you have to have the payroll updates anyway, so I just opted for the subscription lisense. Probably not what you wanted to hear, but the subscription isn't too expensive. At least compaired to CAD/CAM software.
 
Are you using quickbooks for payroll? If so you have to have the payroll updates anyway, so I just opted for the subscription lisense. Probably not what you wanted to hear, but the subscription isn't too expensive. At least compaired to CAD/CAM software.

For one County, in one State, and but a handful of headcount and wage-levels it isn't hard to manually enter payroll, tax, and other changes. They are published, after all.

Another reason we kept ours was that we had around 16 foreign currencies active for it, more as needed. Also the ability to directly generate invoices in several languages, automatically by scheduler and sent as email. With valid Bank 'giro' forms, OCR, Luhn codes, even.

Most of that was not built-into QB at the time. It may be now. Or not.

It is just another database with specialist toolset, after all. Tools are IN it to do all that stuff and a lot more.

Bill
 
Was the crash a legitimate hardware issue, or could it have been your computer was hacked? Were you using a good anti-virus?

I'm wondering if a hacker got your key codes and then crashed your computer. But maybe that's stupid of me to think, as a hacker who stole your key codes would not want you to know - the last thing they'd want is for you to find this out.

I suspect that there are twenty or people in Fushan or Novosibirsk happily enjoying office.
 
I bought a copy of office from a seller on ebay one time, it was only good for one install. Turns out it was a single copy from a multi-user license which should not be been resold. But it came in it's own case and everything looked legit about it.

The problem with Quickbooks is trying to bring your company file up to date to work with a new version of QB, if you have skipped a few years of updates. Then too, it has to work with the current version of windows because it is pretty integrated with Internet Explorer. My 2014 version (when I called it quits to updating and payroll) started to warn me that it wasn't compatible with Windows 10.

I get the concept of imaging a drive but I've never done it. For the most part, the image is out of date in a month or so anyways, that would just be another damn thing to take care of: ADTTTCO
 
Just imaging a drive may not be a successful strategy - I seem to recall that Windows looks at hardware identifiers in calculating whether the installation is legitimate. So if the computer goes down, change out the motherboard, etc., it looks like an installation on a different machine.

Setting up a virtual machine is a somewhat different animal. And backing it up does not require imagine software; you just back up the (small) file(s) that describe(s) the "machine," along with the (large) file that represents the "hard disk" of that machine. (The above refers to the way that VirtualBox does it; it may be that VM or such combines all of this into one file - but either way, it is still just a matter of backing up one or more data files.)

All that said ... I don't know whether the latest versions of Windows have a way to look past the virtualization to read some identifying information in the real hardware -- ?? I know I've not had any trouble transferring a virtual machine set up as Windows XP from one laptop to another, but I vaguely remember some trouble moving a Windows 7 virtual machine. However, I don't recall exactly how I attempted it - I may have been trying only to transfer the "hard drive" without actually transferring the machine descriptor files.
 
So, my computer crashed and I had to reinstall Windows and start over. I basically use only 3 software programs, Office, Quickbooks, and Solidworks. These were all purchased legally 3 years ago along when I bought the computer. They have worked fine until now.

I reinstalled Solidworks and activated the license and it works just fine.

I tried to install Office. It will not accept my product key. Called Microsoft. They say my key is flagged as pirated because it has been used more than 15 times to register Office. Nothing I can do. I have proof of purchase. Microsoft says try the company you bought it from but they won't help me.

Tried to install Quickbooks. Worked fine for 30 days. Then I tried to register the software. Called the number. They tell me it's registered to another business. Once again, nothing they can do.

I bought this stuff from a company called Software Speedy and did it all online. At that time they were well reviewed and everything seemed legitimate. Today their website is gone and there is little trace of them.

Is there anything I can do short of buying new software? This is going to cost me $300-400.

there is a free program for that by an excellent company....and I get all my stuff bloat free from here

RECUVA
Download Recuva 1.53.187 - FileHippo.com

also this might help
How to Find Your Lost Windows or Office Product Keys
 
Just imaging a drive may not be a successful strategy - I seem to recall that Windows looks at hardware identifiers in calculating whether the installation is legitimate. So if the computer goes down, change out the motherboard, etc., it looks like an installation on a different machine.

Yes, even upgrading to a new drive decrements this count. Video system, memory size, and CPU change also.
So an image is only good for a certain number of hardware changes.
Bob
 
One other comment: I echo Bill's (Monarchist) post above -- as he says, LibreOffice will more than adequately replace Office, but it is not identical. If you are only doing basic word processing, you may never notice the difference ... but if you are using more sophisticated features, such as style sheets, outline numbering, etc., you have to get used to places where LO uses a slightly different approach - one that, arguably, can be better, but nonetheless different. Not surprisingly, this is also the point at which you will have the most incompatibility when opening / saving a document in Office format.

One area that is not the least bit compatible: macros. LO can do macros, but it does them very differently than Office, and I do not know of any easy (automated) way to convert from one to the other. In general, I would say that this is one area in which LO is far behind Office.

There is at least one other software package out there that claims to be a near clone of Office - made by Kingsoft?? something like that. I have not tried it, so no idea how well it may or may not work ...
 








 
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