Main Functions of the Activation Wizard

The main page lists the tasks you can do with the activation wizard. It warns you regarding which operations require Administrative level access. You can Register your software and Diagnose activation problems without administrative access, but for critical operations like Activate and Deactivate, administrative access is required.

What is Activation?

NOTE: You should always deactivate your Duxbury program before performing significant computer maintenance like replacing a bad disk drive or upgrading the OS or BIOS.

Manual Activation is 2 Steps

If you activate manually (for example, by email), your activation requires 2 steps: first, sending Duxbury your information, and then receiving a reply with your activation code. When you receive the reply you must open the activation wizard again. On the Main page, the task "Activate this computer" will likely be selected for you. If you are activating your program as a single user, you should use that option. However, if you are activating your program as a license server for multiple users, you must select, "Set up this server to host the network license" instead.

Activation on the Windows Vista System

Windows operating systems, beginning with Vista and including Windows 7 and all those that have followed, have a feature called User Account Control (UAC). Normally, users have UAC turned on. However, for the Vista operating system only, when you use the Activation Wizard to activate your Duxbury program, you need to turn UAC off, and you need to be sure you are running from an account with full write-access privileges on your computer.

Your indicator that you need to turn off UAC is the error, "COM server initialization has failed" when you try to activate. Counter-intuitive as it may seem, running as administrator with UAC on does not solve this problem. For the Vista OS only, you must turn UAC off to run the Wizard. You can turn it on again afterwards.