Unable to register with stardock

Purchased on steam and am currently blocked from playing the title at all.

from Stardock Forums

Hello all,

 

I've tried a google search and a forum search, but the most information I've found is to contact stardock support. In hopes of getting some more immediate support, I'm posting here to see if anyone else in the forums knows a remedy.

 

I purchased this title using Steam.

 

I get the following error:

Application start: 2012-12-1 19.30.3 
Silent mode 
Mode 2 
Submitting activation request... 
Download: success 
Result parsing error (5) 
Error activating the product 
Please ensure the serial number entered is associated with the email you used and attempt to activate again. Include this log file if contacting support.

 

I've emailed stardock support 1 week ago as well as filed a support ticket at the same time and have followed up over email to yesterday to no avail. The support site says I should expect an answer in 2 business days and it's already been 5.

 

I've looked at getting a refund, but apparently that's not possible without first getting in contact with customer support. What do I do in this situation and how do I escalate my request?

I'd prefer to get the game working rather than get a refund, but the customer service from support so far has been terrible I'm not sure if I'm willing to wait out getting a response.

technical
10,086 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

We are sorry for the delay--support is a bit behind their normal response time due to the recent release of Windows 8. Also, please be aware that sending additional mails before receiving a human response on your ticket will reset your place in the queue. Any registration or activation issues need to be addressed through support, as noone else will have the appropriate access to resolve such issues.

 

If you purchased through Steam, you are subject to their return policy, which may differ from that on direct Stardock sales.

Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Do you have Windows 8?  There seems to be a problem with that OS and the Stardock registration process.  I recently bought a 64bit Win 8 machine and ALL of my Stardock games on the Gamestop PC App (used to be Impulse owned by Stardock) will NOT register.  Not only have I contacted Stardock directly but I also contacted Gamestop (they told me to contact Stardock).  It's not a Gamestop PC App issue since all my other games run properly.  What ticks me off is that I bought these games directly from Stardock (when they owned Impulse) and I already had them registered.  When I changed computers the last time (when Stardock still owned Impulse), it did NOT ask me to re-register.

When I was looking around the Gamestop Stardock forum I noticed a LOT of similar issues - all of them were people who had just  bought Windows 8 machines.  With the Gamestop PC app, unlike Steam, there is no error message.  There is a Stardock popup and every button on it works EXCEPT the REGISTER button.  It does nothing.  I tried again after disabling my antivirus and still nothing.  And Windows8 is so different from previous Windows - I was able to find the user settings but there is NO option for Administrative privileges.

 

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

If you are running Win8, try the following:

Download: http://sd.stardock.com/sdactivate_legacy.zip
Please extract its contents to the application's root directory.

If it asks you to overwrite the existing files say yes to all.

Run the REGISTER_[game name].CMD file that matches the game you need help with. Enter your account information and the serial number.

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

Yes.  Thank you.  I have been able to activate SOASE and Entrenchment.  Now to download GCII and Elemental and activate those as well.  However to be clear, once you run the Register [GameName].cmd file, it does not automatically ask for email and registration number.  You have to try to start the game application file (and run as administrator) for that to pop up.  For that reason you cannot attempt this using the Gamestop app.  You need to run it directly from its root directory.

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

The issue seems to be that the activators can't get access to the "C:\ProgramData\Stardock Games" folder to write the .bin file for the serial number, even when using "run as administrator".

Here's the method I had to use to get the GC2UE activation to work for me in Windows 8.1 (64-bit):

  1. download the zip file containing the legacy activation files. extract the file, copy all of the files from the extracted location into "C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock Games\Galactic Civilizations II - Ultimate Edition" folder, overwriting any existing ones.
  2. Right-click and edit the "register_gc2ultimate.cmd" file. Select the entire command that's there and copy to clipboard.
  3. Open a Windows command prompt (must be run as administrator). enter the command "cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock Games\Galactic Civilizations II - Ultimate Edition" to move to the folder where the activation .exe files are.
  4. Right-click in the command line window and select paste. it should paste the command you copied from the .cmd file into the next line. Hit Enter and you should get an activation window that looks different than the one you saw earlier, when first starting the game. this activation window only asks for email and serial number. enter that information and click the activate button and this time, it should work correctly. Now when you start the game from the launcher, it should launch the game directly without prompting for activation.

I also changed the compatibility mode for "ReactorActivate.exe" and "SDActivate.exe" to force them to run as administrator before I did this. I'm not sure if that makes a difference or not.

STARDOCK: You need to fix this. It's absurd that a year after Windows 8 came out, this runaround is what needs to happen to make these games work correctly. It can't take more than a few hours for someone to come up with a permanent fix for this that can be released as a hotfix for these games.