Just wanted to let people following this thread know that we’ve (finally!) been able to reproduce the issue on one of our own systems. We already knew that Paddle seems to be returning false “no activation errors,” but we now have a better idea why it might be doing so. And yes, changes to a system’s network hardware do seem to contribute.
Thank you all for your patience and understanding.
And yes, changes to a system’s network hardware do seem to contribute.
Interesting. We did change a router recently, and so did our IP address.
I know @kewms posted they’ve repro’d it. Here’s mine:
Here’s what I’ve noticed:
Paddle detects network changes, checking its config IPAK. Finding it’s not valid, Paddle ERASES its OWN config. Tuh-huh! Geez, Paddle! Thumbs up for awesome design! (smartarse) See image exhibit below.
Appears the “date” value jiggles the Paddle security. The ‘identity’ and ‘device identity’ values are data from the connected network SSID (or network “domain”) you were on –at that time when it recorded the license activation.
Now, let’s throw your system on another network (SSID or network connection, domain, etc)…
Paddle freaks out, like a kid who didn’t receive a participation trophy. That’s what happened to me. Well, minus the freaking-out-like-a-kid part.
Three different network SSIDs, riding bareback with no VPN is how I lived my life. When I ran Scrivener – Boom! The bomb went off.
Scrivener was spanked into submission by Paddle. 
After registering Scrivener again… eh hem… cough- cough -I mean, Paddle, then the config was written with new data. This data appears to be a hash of the network SSID you are on (again, at the time [including an identity value of your device]). See image exhibit below.
Anyway. It doesn’t bother me. Just shut up and re-register. You’ve got writing to do.
Thank you for the detailed examination of the problem. I think we’ve seen this internally, but I’m tagging @AmberV just in case as he’s more focused on this issue than I am.
Frustrating in the extreme for those impacted. I’m just about to be moving IP a number of times in a short period. Let’s see if it mucks up. At least L&L have had it happen to them so hopefully a fix on the way.
It has more to it than just the IP address. I use a VPN for just about everything I do, I very rarely operate in the clear, and so from Paddle’s perspective I come from all over the place and nowhere in particular, but I’ve never once been deactivated. It probably has more to do with the configuration of the machine itself, and what type of network you are using, rather than which network, if that makes sense. Ethernet cable into a router one day, phone tether a week later, wifi at a coffeehouse a month after that—that’s probably more the factor. And whether that matters could depend upon the machine itself. Does all networking go through a central device on the motherboard, or does it have discrete components handling different cables and such.
If everyone that went out for a coffee to do some writing got disconnected we would see way, way more of this than we do. Statistically speaking this only happens to a small percentage of people—which would make sense if it requires more variables changing than just visiting the folks for the weekend and using their connection.
This is not unusual practice by the way, pretty much any software will deactivate if you copy all of its files over to another computer and try to run it. But what it seems like is that their trigger is a bit too sensitive, particularly in how it is packaged for the Windows version, and that’s something we’re working with them on.
Do you actually have visibility on how often this happens? If not, it could be one of those things that people just kind of put up with since it doesn’t usually happen more than once a month or so.
L&L products (including Scapple) are the only software I’ve ever had this happen with, and I use quite a number of different programs.
I was looking at Paddle’s website, and as I read it, it seems they’re no longer supporting their Windows tools? If that’s true, it might explain why it’s so wonky. It would also suggest that continuing to rely on them isn’t the wisest decision.
A suggestion: start selling on the new Windows app store and let Microsoft handle the licensing/activation.
Not directly, but I can assure you that when a problem is widespread we know about it. There are enough people out there using it that our support queue gets slammed when there is such a problem. It’s not a rare issue, but my main point was that it isn’t as simple as the IP address.
That doesn’t really contradict what I said, since I qualified it with the problem being that their algorithm is too sensitive to what constitutes a “machine change”. It is the concept of machine changes invalidating auth files that is not unusual.
As to the rest, that is true, but they are working on a cross-platform mechanism to replace what we’re currently using, that should make everything much better once it is in place.
Just sticking up a ‘me too’ for this thread. No reply needed. S3W requested re-activation 5 minutes ago when I switched from my laptop to my desktop to continue writing my WIP. Never had an issue doing that before.
ISP has been working on their cables, etc, lately and we did lose the net twice at the weekend, maybe the internal addresses changes for the desktop. The Macbook and Windows laptop in the same building didn’t have this issue.
Hello. I have been having this problem for a long time. Its nice to see what the issue is. I dont mind re-activating. sure it should be fixed, but its not hard to re-type the code in. However, this last time, today, when I did it, my projects are gone. I found 2 files on my computer that appear to be the projects, but when I try to open them it says they are outdated files and cannot be opened on the new one. It then asks me to update them and create backup, which it then says a backup cannot be created, so they cannot be opened on older versions of scriviner. So I try to open them without the backup and nothing happens. So I have lost all the work I have done over several months. I did back up the files when this first started happening, so I have some stuff, but why did it erase my projects and is there anyway to get them back? Every time I close scriviner, it says creating backup. so if it has done that, why are my projects gone? If this is listed in another forum, I apologize, first time posting, so I will try and learn how to go about doing this better in the future.
I found some forums that might help. So if anyone cant point to some good keywords to use that may connect the two, the deactivation that keeps happened due to the above issues and projects being deleted, that would be helpful. but for now, ill look around in the project deleted posts and see if anyone has this issue.
Your projects are stored separately from the Scrivener application. Any issues with your projects are unrelated to the activation issue.
You can locate all projects on your system by searching for .scriv files. Beyond that, your symptoms sound similar to what can happen with incomplete synchronization. Are the projects stored with Dropbox, One Drive, or a similar service?
Returning to this thread after my contribution six months ago to say that this continues to happen.
I really appreciated reading the investigations above, but I’m on a desktop computer that doesn’t move and I don’t use a VPN, and my external IP address has stayed constant over that time. I guess I could be getting a different IP occasionally on my local LAN - is that enough to cause the Paddle config issue mentioned above?
Either way, just to flag that this continues to happen and continues to be oddly demoralising, even though I’ve got the “copy licence key and enter email address” reactivation steps down to a fine art after all this practice.
Hope you’re all well <3
Have you opened a support case with L&L support?
Please post a link to the tech team, Like the OP, I have had problems for YEARS and I never get any resolution except a proforma email and then I am ignored.
Like you, I have had problems with Scrivener.
Mine have been ongoing over years and the only resolution I get is a proforma email along the lines of “here lovely user, some soft words to make you feel better while we completely ignore your problem”.
The reason I stick with it is my text is too large to transfer and I have committed too much work to it.
My boss has recommended I try Zotero, a similar platform, but open source and free. I am vowing to apply some time to transfer my text year to escape being ghosted for another year by the devs of this platform.
If you have not received a human response in a reasonable time, please check your junk mail folder.
If that doesn’t help, please message me or one of the other forum administrators with the email address you used to contact support.
Hey kewms,
Thx for reply, I am not sure you meant my issues or the OP, but I think I might own it anyway Lol!
Anywho, of course I checked my junk mail, alas, no joy… but, I have posted the full extent of my woes to the “bug reporting board” and emailed the help page directly! (You can tell its me as the trail of issues goes back some years)
And due to me not being able to find a place to message you directly from this page (I looked, but not too hard, I am trying to get work done) and not wanting to DOX myself on this forum, my name and email is available directly off that bug report.
I am not sure how the conversation went between you and your boss, but Zotero is a citation manager. According to their website it is ”a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources.” It is not an application you could use for actually writing. I say this as someone who uses Scrivener and Zotero for different parts of the writing process.
Yeah, thanks for the reply OwenKelly, I’ve just gone looking deeper into Zotero and have seen that too… I need the actual writing software ‘including’ the citation manager… sigh… my boss has misunderstood. I thought I had options to continue writing but it looks like I will be scrapping the three years work I’ve done and going back to the very beginning using word/endnote 
