Adventures in manual activation.

from GalCiv2 Forums

When I bought the complete GC2 package by download I was a happy guy.  I had bought GC2 off a discount rack some time before and thought it was great.  I never updated it.  I was thinking about updating it, but opted to just wait for TotA.

When my downloaded package was ready I ported it over to my game machine, and in just three weeks I managed to push all three titles through the manual activation process.  That seemed a bit of an extreme PITA, but it was a great game, so I was happy.

Then I did a major upgrade/rebuild on my game machine.  I thought about reinstalling GC2, but there was an upgrade to 2.0 in the near future rumor mill so I waited.

Right before Thanksgiving I saw the 2.0 available, downloaded it, and spent the better part of a week screwing around trying to get everything activated.  DL good, DA good, TotA no good.  Rather than hang around crying in my beer I got distracted playing another game.

For early Christmas yesterday I got Mount & Blade, on disk, from a store.  Loaded it on my game machine and immediately bumped into the dreaded 'Internet connection required for activation, or you can activate manually'.  Five minutes later the manual activation was complete, no sweat.  I was amazed and strangly gratified, and overcome by a motivating force.

So, I am about to embark on the ultimate mission; getting my bought and paid for Stardock software to work.  Wish me luck.  I will provide updates as I go along.

 

4,161 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

since 2.0 requires impulse and that impulse needs internet at least one time (upon install I think) ... I wonder how you managed offline activation

Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

It is possible to copy the game files from a computer running Impulse to another computer and run the activate.exe, then choose for e-mail activation. Then e-mail the activation request on a computer with internet connection, the returned data can be typed into activate.exe. Never tried this, but the possibility exists.

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

That's what I do, and it worked for DL and DA.  There is no practical reason that it didn't work with TotA.  TotA and DA gave me the exact same results that they gave me on the original installation.  Last time I reinstalled and DA worked, but I got the same result again from TotA. In a bit of weirdness I deleted the sig.bin and tried again, and mysteriously it worked.

This time it was harder getting multiple attempts at sig.bin generation.  Stardock seemed quite content to say 'you must Impulse' rather than acknowledging that the problem is in the off-line activation process.

I actually just quit working on it.  While I'm pissed off about having a great game that I can't play, I have other games.