Locked out of V10

PeterWright wrote on 11/30/2010, 10:35 PM

A problem I posted about 2 weeks ago is still here. I wrote to Support last week, but like Arlo Guthrie's town dump they were closed for Thanksgiving - I didn't realise it was such a long festival - have heard nothing, so maybe someone here can help.

Because of a weird problem I'll mention later, I uninstalled and reinstalled V10. When I tried to open the reinstalled program, I got this:

I put in my Serial Number and clicked Submit and got this:

... so I clicked ok and got this:

and round and round I go in a vicious circle. I simply cannot open V10, which also means no Boris Contnuum, no Stabilize etc etc

My original problem was a project containing only Sony MXF files from an EX1 and two wav files. I worked on the project for three days, then on the fourth day the project would not open - it got to between 33% and 38% then "Vegas has to close"

I had to start the project from scratch in V9 - 3 days work - let's conservatively say $1200 - lost. The project is now complete in V9 and delivered.

I'm not confident that support will have anything useful, although to me there is obviously a flaw in the "register after trial expired" routine.

Any ideas chaps?

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PeterWright wrote on 12/7/2010, 4:55 AM

Bob - thanks, I'd missed that subtle difference - I'll have another go in the morning.

So far I've only reinstalled V10, which doesn't work, and V9 which does, so it's worth trying anything short of, as you say, a system rebuild.

Peter

(Grazie - no need to say sorry - this has already got way past the point of absurdity!)

farss wrote on 12/7/2010, 5:41 AM

Peter, I just did some digging and realised I might be leading you up a long road that'll lead you nowhere.

1) There's a zillion entries in the CLID with "Sony" in them. These seem to just relate to the plugins, you don't need to worry about them and you'd waste a lot of time finding and deleting them for no reason.

2) The entry you probably need to delete is the one that tells the installer you've already installed V10 trial. It has got to be very, very well hidden. If it wasn't, well, it'd be very easy to simply delete it, install the trial version again and get another 30days for free.

If you remember I mentioned I'd previously had a similar infuriating install problem with another app and it was easy enough to find the offending key and delete it. What I'd overlooked was this company's trial doesn't expire and is very, very limited in its functionality. Plus all this key stores is the version number and it's there to stop you installing an older version on a site running a later version of the back end.
Vegas is a tad more generous so they have to keep the key to the safe much better hidden. Support might be able to tell you where it is or they might not even if they knew or it might be hashed.

Bob.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 12/7/2010, 6:57 AM

> I wrote to Support last week, but like Arlo Guthrie's town dump they were closed for Thanksgiving

So there you are sitting on the "group W" bench! (gosh... no one commented on your Alice's Restaurant reference!)

> So - and now it's getting weirder again - I downloaded again from My Software, uninstalled the Trial then TRIED to instal the new download. Clicking on the .exe file brought this:

There is a deeper problem with your PC if you can't run the standard installer. This should NOT be happening, especially if you have Windows 7 64-bit. Forget about the "my account" links... download the update directly from the update page and see if that makes a difference. That will give you 10a which is the latest installer.

> Not sure what to try next - this reminds me of a car bumper sticker: "Help! - the Paranoids are trying to get me!"

Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean that people are not trying to get you! ;-)

~jr

Grazie wrote on 12/7/2010, 7:30 AM

ooo . . I can smell it . . if it's gonna be the Installer . . cross fingers, and tootsies!

Waiting for other shoe to drop . . never been so excited!!!

Grazie

Earl_J wrote on 12/7/2010, 7:44 AM

Hey JR. . .

"I said "littering" ... and they all moved away from me on the bench; until I said "and creating a nuisance" and they all gathered around me on the bench and shook my hand and patted me on the back..."

I used to let it play me to sleep at night and wake me in the morning ... yep, it played all night... lol

"You can get anything you want..."

We didn't let it pass, we just thought everyone knew the song... (wink) thanks for making us remember. . .

Until that time ... Earl J.

PeterWright wrote on 12/8/2010, 6:19 AM

JR, Bob, Grazie,
thanks for your help, which is much appreciated - I'm afraid I must keep you, and myself, in suspense for a bit longer - I've had a day when I had no time at all to tackle this again - too busy producing stuff for clients using V9.

JR - you'd be interested in this - I've also just taken delivery of a Roland GR20 guitar synth, and once I've got the GK3 pick-up installed and working, I'll be able to play sax, clarinet, strings, piano etc etc on guitar.

But tomorrow, I'll put an hour or two aside to challenge SCS's deeply embedded "I'm sorry mate but your bleedin' trial version has expired, even though you have paid for it, plus a very expensive Boris plug-in..."

Ah life.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 12/8/2010, 6:37 AM

> JR - you'd be interested in this - I've also just taken delivery of a Roland GR20 guitar synth, and once I've got the GK3 pick-up installed and working, I'll be able to play sax, clarinet, strings, piano etc etc on guitar.

I always knew that guitar players were just "wanna be" keyboard players inside. LOL! ;-)

Actually, my son just started playing guitar and that got me back into it. I just bought a Black Fender Strat with a maple neck and I'm having a blast with NI Guitar Rig 4. I can't believe how incredible these amp modelers are.

~jr

PeterWright wrote on 12/8/2010, 7:06 AM

Yes, I've had lots of fun with Guitar Rig, Johnny - lets me play with all those amps I could never afford.

Now with the GR20, I can switch between guitar and banjo and do duelling banjos without climbing a tree for each change ;)

PeterWright wrote on 12/9/2010, 9:02 PM

Oh dear - back to Groundhog Day.

I went through REGEDIT deleting everything I was told.

I downloaded the version JR linked to.

It Installed ok.

When, however, I tried to open the newly installed V10a, the now legendary "Your Vegas Pro Trial has Expired" message appeared, and when I entered my Serial No. and clicked Submit it said "The application will restart to complete the upgrade process." and clicking OK brought back the Trial has Expired message.

Bob - I agree that if wherever the info re. Trial expiring is, it could be removed, that would help, but for the reasons you mentioned I don't expect SCS to tell me that, or they'd then have to shoot me (Might be worth it.)

BUT the REAL problem to me is that once the information required to get past this is entered it doesn't do what it says, but loops back.

I'll try again with Support, but ........if they don't fix this soon, V11 will be out.

farss wrote on 12/9/2010, 9:13 PM

1) Be aware that if you don't respond to a support message in 48 hours your ticket is considered closed. I think you can reopen them...

2) If you don't already have Skype, get it now. Put some money onto your account and ring SCS. It's like $0.01 per minute to call the USA.

Bob.

PeterWright wrote on 12/10/2010, 2:17 AM

Thanks Bob,
1) Yes, I'm well within 48 hours ...
2) I'll keep that suggestion in mind, but I'm not sure where a phone call would score over written support. Admittedly so far it's been useless, but at least I do have written evidence of how useless it's been.

Here's a para from my latest reply to them this morning - is my reasoning fair?

"When I try to open the freshly installed program, it tells me that my Vegas Pro Trial has expired, then tells me what to do if I've purchased it - enter my Serial No.
NOW, THIS IS WHERE THE PROBLEM SEEMS TO LIE - YOUR Program then says the application will restart to complete the upgrade process, BUT IT DOESN'T. Clicking OK does not do what it should - instead it takes me back to the previous message again. THIS ROUTINE MUST HAVE BEEN WRITTEN BY YOUR PROGRAMMERS, so please confirm that you have consulted them and found out why it does this."

Grazie wrote on 12/10/2010, 2:49 AM

Excellent, Pete, y'cant do more than what should be required.

Grazie

farss wrote on 12/10/2010, 2:56 AM

A phone call has immediacy, response time is seconds. A text message just goes into a queue, response time, hours, even days.

Your reply reads OK to me.

Bob.

ps
If you get nowhere with support and are faced with having to do a complete re-install starting with Win7 you could try Trial Period Has Expired.

PeterWright wrote on 12/10/2010, 4:03 AM

Yes Bob, I take your point about immediacy, but:

a) I have got used to the daily (or sometimes bi-daily) pace of replies - in the meantine I am still producing with V9 on my other computer, and have sort of become punch-drunk about being able to use V10 again! I have seriously lost at least $2000 in time/earnings, and still have ahead the prospect of having to reinstal every SCS program plus many plug-ins.

b) I may not express myself as clearly verbally as in writing.

c) I have this bizarre nightmare picture of being on the phone whilst reinstalling Windows. Even doing all that uninstal/registry stuff over the phone is tricky, whereas I can print out written lists of instructions and tick them off as I go.

Perhaps the most bizarre part of all this is that I haven't even been able to investigate the inital problem that set all this off - why a project with only Sony MXFs and 2 wavs which started in V10 refused to open after 3 days. To paraphrase Don McLean - " ...perhaps I never will ....."

edit: p.s. thanks for the "Trial has expired link" - that'll be an option IF my next reply from support doesn't solve everything - maybe even peace in the Middle East?

TheHappyFriar wrote on 12/10/2010, 4:12 AM

If you're losing that much $$, buy a new HD & re-install Windows & Vegas on the new drive. Then if it worked you could at the least duel boot or slowly install your stuff on the new drive.

PeterWright wrote on 12/10/2010, 4:28 AM

Yeah, thanks HF - what I mean is I had to spend 3 days with V9 repeating the work I'd already done in V10, plus all the downtime following advice from support which not only got me nowhere, but took me backwards - still leaves me with all that reinstalling to do ....

Another ironic thing is that this was a totally fresh instal of Windows7, done by a local professional, and it's still working perfectly for everything except V10. It was previously also working fine for V10a with Boris Continuum etc., before it just refused to open one morning.

But I appreciate the idea - even though I have no idea how to set up dual boot, (with W7 and W7?) and there's another half-day finding out about that!

Cheers.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 12/10/2010, 5:06 AM

well, for me, I duel boot with a linux boot program if I do that. :)

But windows should have a file called "boot.ini" in your C root folder & that tells you what choices you have when booting windows. You can also specify multiple Windows installs.

But I'd think that trying to reinstall 7 & then Vegas lone just to see what's going on.

farss wrote on 12/10/2010, 5:58 AM

@TheHappyFriar
Having two separate cold swappable HDDs is a good idea, I wouldn't call that dual boot though. Tomorrow I'm going to make this PC dual boot, Win7/32 and win7/64. Wish me luck, my first attempt. Mananged to use Win7 to shrink the disk and partition it in preparation.

@Peter
Installing Win7 is pretty straightforward, with much intrepidation I even upgraded the better half's laptop from XP to Win7 and it was a no brainer. A clean install is way simpler and really unless you have an issue with drivers it's pretty much insert disc, follow on screen instructions and job done. Probably the easiest OS to get running of anything M$.

I understand your real concern here. V10 is really making me gun shy, too many funky things happening. With V9 in its darkest hour all it did was crash, PIA but there was always a way out without too much work.

Bob.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 12/10/2010, 6:05 AM

I'm one of the blessed few who hasn't had any V10 problems. Except it renders slower then 8, but that's it. :)