stuck in trial mode

This might be a Win7 problem that no one knows anything about, but maybe it has nothing to do with Win7 and is familiar and someone can tell me about a solution. The system is 64 bit Windows 7 Home Premium.

I installed CoolEdit 2000. I ran Ce2kreg and entered the name and number. The program was registered and seemed happy.

I installed the four add-on, audio cleanup (NR), tweakin toys, EQ pro, and studio, registering each in the process of installing them. I installed Ce2kdx to allow DX plugins. I saw, afterwards, that SteveG’s writeup on re-installing the pgm says to avoid registering the add-ons until after they are installed and the main program is started, but I hadn’t read that yet. Originally, when I bought them, I installed and registered each add-on in the one step process (under Win98).

Everything seemed fine although I did not test anything extensively. I went on to install 15 to 20 other programs, some of which were more than a bit painful.

I started to use CE2k. The NR declicking function said it was going to add tones. It was in demo mode. Sure enough, it alone of all the add-ons was listed in the to-be-purchased window. I don’t know if it was that way after I finished the installs or if something happened later.

I entered the serial number via that option in the to-buy window but the program proclaimed it invalid. The number was entered correctly. Furthermore, I looked into the registry on the Win98 machine and verified that it was using the same value (I have copies of each e-mail from Syntrillium delivering the serial numbers to me, so I didn’t think it likely to be corrupted.).

Perhaps more could have been done, maybe it should have been. But, after trying a few things, all of which I probably could not recall right now, I decided to uninstall and start over. Too much time, effort, and tears of blood had gone into getting some of the other software installed and registered for me to consider going back to a system restore point prior to the Ce2k install.

I uninstalled, I ran CCleaner registry cleaner. I hunted down and deleted copies of Cool.ini. I deleted related entries in the Users folders. I manually scoured the registry of various (I hope!) orphaned entries that were not removed by the uninstall programs. I restarted the system a number of times between steps.

I created a manual restore point. I installed Ce2k. I ran Ce2kreg and entered the name and number. That process said the program is now registered and then started the program -- in Trial mode.

I’ve done a number of things, including using the restore point and starting over again, carefully taking notes on each step. I can’t get it beyond trial mode.

When the program is started after the basic installation it shows two options for purchase, the $69 and the $39 versions. Since I ran Ce2kreg there are no purchase options, even though the program is in trial mode and displays the ‘select two functions’ dialogue every time it is started.

I ran ce2kreg a second time. It came up with the name and serial number already in its entry spaces. Nothing seemed to change because of re-running it. As far as I can determine, the registry entries for Ce2k are in place, but there certainly might be something missing that I don’t know about. Not having gotten by this Trial Version phase for the main program, I have not tried to install any add-ons.

The instructions for installing the add-ons weren't optional - all sorts of dreadful things happen if you don't follow them to the letter, as several people discovered.

You can't altogether clean the registry, whatever you use - you and the cleaner simply have no idea what the coded entries are, and they are very likely to be the ones that will be screwing with your installation. That was the situation even before considering an OS which was never even dreamed of at the time...

Quite frankly your only easy bet (and I couldn't guarantee that even this will work) would be to roll the system back. A safer bet would be to reinstall it from scratch, because some of those registry entries are tricky. You can jump up and down and scream about this all you want, but it won't alter anything. There are several points to note, though:

1. Whilst there's a good chance that CE2000 will work with W7, I would have thought, there are absolutely no guarantees.

2. OTOH, there is an absolute guarantee that if you don't get the installation process right that you'll screw the installation, regardless of the OS you are using.

Yes, there is no guarantee that CE2k will work correctly under Win7, but it does work. Several other people have also reported it installed and functioning.

My request is at the end of the post. Between here and there I review a few things and explain why what I want to know seems relevant.

As I believe I wrote in an earlier thread, I purchased this “new” computer with 64 bit Win7 Ultimate installed. Little had been done in or too the OS installation before I got it. It seemed fully functional. I used it for testing purposes for a couple of weeks.

That included installing CE2k. I don’t remember if I installed all the add-ons but I do remember that everything I tried worked well, including processing some long recordings to compare times and results against the same processes on my Win98 machine (e.g. NR on a 1GB file). Maybe some transforms would not have worked so nicely, but I ran into no problems. This was with the MB audio functioning, which I later disabled in the MB BIOS -- before going on to the next major step.

Next I purchased a new hard drive and a copy of 64 bit Windows 7 Home Premium. I made four partitions on the new hard drive. Then I disconnected the original hard drive to avoid any interactions. I installed Win7, customized some settings, got broadband time to installed all Windows updates (after two to three weeks waiting), then installed a variety of utilities and other applications.

When everything seemed as alright as Win7 can be alright, I reconnected the original hard drive, deleted its single partition containing the other Win7, made 4 partitions on it, and copied some data from my Win98 machine via an ethernet connection. Partition 1 on this drive remained empty for future use.

I then moved my Audiophile 2496 to the machine, installed the drivers, then CoolEdit 2000. The program installed and registered. I installed and registered the four add-ons.

My speculation is that I moved too quickly with the first add-on and continued on without entering its serial number (which I later learned from the sticky here is considered the right way). I did enter the serial number at the end of install for each of the other three add-ons and they registered and functioned.

I did some more testing. Everything worked until I wanted to declick and found that add-on was not registered and would add tones. That brings us back to the first post of this thread. The point of all this verbiage is that I successfully installed, registered, and used the main CE2k program in two versions of Windows 7, on two different hard drives of one computer.

I haven’t been able to fix the problem. Windows 7 has been too stupid to find the system image I made before installing CE2k so I can’t step back to that point.

Next step was to disconnect the system hard drive from the computer, boot from the Win 7 DVD, and install Windows into the first , empty partition of the original hard drive.

To install CE2k, I used a CD-R I created in 2002, containing the source programs and registrations e-mails. The same error occurs: CE2k installs, the registration program claims to do its thing, but CE2k remains in trial mode. After running the registration, CE2k does not provide the “buy now” option under Help that it displays before running ce2kreg.exe, so something happens during registration.

Next I used the windows DVD again. I deleted all four partitions, then created just one (actually two, as there is an automatic hidden 100MB partition demanded by Windows), then installed Win 7 again. The registration of CE2k went the same wrong way again.

 Some things may be different under Windows 7 than under Win98 but CE2k can work, it has worked, but now it won’t work That has to mean that something now is different on this computer from when it did work. I have run multiple virus scans of the system. It seems very unlikely there is some extra sneaky unfindable something that only effects this one program.

I know some people have poor opinions about my staying with CE2k. I do hope to someday be able to try some of the supposedly improved tools of Audition. However, I’ve learned to do what I want to do with CE2k and it has worked exceptionally well. I have tried various other recommended programs from time to time but none work as well, in most respects. None are as versatile. Ce2k is the software I have used more than any other application for the past 10 years.

I don’t expect anyone to debug my problem but I can’t even get any replies on my inquiries in several forums (including this one) about the possibility of reinitializing the HD boot sectors, something hardly specific to my 10+ year old application. Using the boot area for application security seem to me very unlikely for several easily stated reasons but I won’t argue the idea.

What I would like to know is if it is possible to contact the program’s author (David Johnston?). How? I would like answers to just a couple of simple questions.

Yes (or No), there is deliberate security to prevent re-installing the program??
Starting over with a new hard drive (and/or flashing the machine’s BIOS) (or something that can be stated), is the recommended way around the current difficulty??

Getting a new hard drive is not a simple decision for me. I would not hesitate to try a new drive if one were available, it is the purchasing that is the difficulty.  Therefore I would like to know if there is any concrete reason to expect something different from a new HD. I hope for something more than speculation, or at least if it is speculation, it comes from the horse's mouth.

What I would like to know is if it is possible to contact the program’s author (David Johnston?). How? I would like answers to just a couple of simple questions.

David hasn't been heard from for a while, and I don't think that it would be an understatement to say that he's rather reclusive... but I'll try the only email address I have and point him at this thread. Once again, there are absolutely no guarantees...

*update* - I have lit the blue touchpaper...

Thank you.

In the interest of completeness (uncompleted):
I dug out an old, slow, 5GB hard drive, tested it, and formatted it. I temporarily replaced the boot HD on the Win98 machine with it and installed Win98.

I installed CooleEdit and the add-on. Everything seemed normal. I uninstalled. Some registry fragments are left behind and cool.ini in \Windows isn’t deleted by the uninstall, but the presence of these made no problems when I re-installed everything.

To test further I again uninstalled, then installed again. This third time I sort-of tried to trip up the process by entering the serial number for each add-on as part of its install. Again there were no problems.

Once more I uninstalled, then installed again. Still no difficulties. I did not try to do any real audio processing, but everything is there, selectable, and seems to act normally. The conclusion has to be that there is no deliberate aspect to prevents re-installing.

A side note: the size of everything on the C: drive, with Win98, a variety of essential drivers, and CE2k, is well under 300MB.

I believe I understand the idea of sensitivity to initial conditions. I suspect many people were essentially aware of the basic facts, if not the extensive ramifications, long before Lorenz made a formal recognition of it. However, it tries my imagination to believe that my first attempts to install CE2k under two different versions of Win7 just happened to meet rare conditions that can’t be deliberately recreated (but have certainly been met by other people). Obviously there is something wrong under Win7 on my computer, vis a vis CE2k, but ... .

I also deleted all partitions on the second drive of the Win7 computer then  created a small FAT32 partition. The rest of the drive was left unallocated. Win98 mostly installed but could not complete the final steps, so there was no testing of CE2k that way. I hypothesize that the hardware isn’t compatible with Win98, but my experiences with CE2k under Win7 on it don’t leave me with much confidence about anything involving the inner working of the machine.

Maybe I would have been better off to have purchased the fading WinXP, but I did have the opportunity to do quite a bit of testing under Win7 before I decided to buy my own copy. The testing  covered  CE2k and perhaps ten other audio applications I use quite a bit, plus a double handful of non-audio programs. I’ve had a few other difficulties with Win7 but they turned out to be related to the necessity to do some things a bit differently than under Win98 rather than being basic stops (except for CE2k and one old 16 bit program that Win7 flatly rejected as non-compatible as soon as I attempted the install). Once up and running, everything else I've tried so far seems fine.