New Motherboard=Lost Serialization

Just a word of caution: My motherboard was recently replaced on my MacBookPro 15", because the darned video "card" is actually attached to the board itself, which means when my screen started acting up the ENTIRE motherboard had to be replaced.(Thank God for Applecare)

I fired up FCP 5.1, and it asked me to re-authorize. Fair enough, but I was stationed in Taiwan, and the box for FCP was in my storage locker in Canada!!

So no use of FCP until that SN is located, which equalled a lot of downtime and frustration.

Treatment

Thats correct T., the apps are serialized to your motherboard's hardware id ... avoids folks appropriating software licenses from old hard drive installs. This is relatively common practice. In such situations one might be able to justify the use of a temporary serial number rather than suffer the downtime and frustration

When working in commercial post, there are two kinds of things that are immensely valuable: Big, heavy, rack-mounted things with lots of buttons and blinky lights, and wee tiny pieces of paper with strings of numbers and letters on them.

My personal trick is to keep copies of all my license keys in a text file in my Dropbox, and also in my Gmail. The Dropbox copy is sync'd to my laptop, my phone AND my iPad, and the Gmail'd copy is there in case Dropbox disappears or whatever. I'm kind of OCD about it, actually. I've got my license key for Final Cut 3 in there, for cryin' out loud.

And where do you keep your backup Avid dongle Jeff? Oh please no ....

That's a bit personal, innit?

Brilliant.
I'm going to do this exact thing, thanks!

Treatment

That's why I keep all my SN# on a text file on a flash drive. Not too hard to do.

Chi-Ho Lee
Film & Television Editor
Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Instructor

Yeah...my little 16kb text file with 4 pages of all my license serials on it lives on a waterproof "Survivor" thumb drive. THAT is what I will grab if my house is on fire (along with my Wife, 2 kids & cats). Those numbers ARE the apps. You can always get the software anywhere / anytime if you have the serials.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Someone once asked a friend of mine what two things he would get from his house in case of a fire. He said his dog (of course) and, after a pause .. one of the twins.

Well kids are heavy, dude. He's not Superman.

I always thought you'd get the wife and the kids will follow... And the dog will follow the kids. So everyone's safe... except for the FCS serial numbers (had to stay on topic there).



www.strypesinpost.com

that guy may not have had a wife & kids.
most likely you'll look around (thinking about thumb drives, and what order to save things in) and the mother of your children will already have them out the door!

Quote

I always thought you'd get the wife and the kids will follow... And the dog will follow the kids. So everyone's safe...

You obviously don't have kids...or a dog.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

The dog will follow in most cases.. I've never had a fire, so I never knew what dogs would do in the case of a fire.



www.strypesinpost.com

Hi,

I never type a serial number when installing the application. When I get a new application I type the Serial Number into my Password Storage Application (1Password [try it, you'll like it]) then for the first install and all subsequent installs I copy and paste the Serial Number from 1Password for the install. It also runs on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

It also stores and autofills Web Site User Names and Passwords. Because I don't ever type them or remember them I can use randomly generated passwords that look like this "EPLpXbrK3eP25w" so its more secure and more convenient.

It also stores and autofills Credit Card Numbers with expire dates and codes which is very handy for online purchasing.

The data file is encrypted and Password protected.

Of course I have backed up copies with my cloned boot partitions and TM backups.

Best Wishes!

Mitch

Excellent idea, I will check that out!

Cheers