Locked out in 1.9.16

After installing 1.9.16 yesterday I was locked out of Scrivener. After not receiving any response from support, I spent some time trawling through this forum, where is says that 1.9.16 has supposedly fixed this kind of problem. Not so.

There seems to be a systemic problem with license activation. I find it incomprehensible why there is not a stickied thread or some other sort of obvious notice about these issues for users, instead of forcing us to read through threads with titles that don’t even describe out problem?

I attempted to find your ticket in the system, but could find nothing under the address you use for the forum. Let me know by PM what address you may have used to contact us, and I can look it up.

Thanks, I will PM you. Sent a message to tech support more than 72 hours ago, no response. Very very frustrating.

This issue is still not fixed. Absolutely infuriating. Things worked great until I made the mistake of updating to .16, I have no idea why you put out such a flawed “patch”?

Still not fixed. So much for my plan to do some writing this long holiday weekend. I’ve never encountered “technical support” as slow as this, the maximum they can put out is one e-mail per day apparently.

Hi treiter,

While you’re waiting for L&L to sort out the issue, you could try reverting back to whichever version it was that was working for you.

I would revert like this:

  1. Save Scriv preferences to a file. Tools > Options > Manage (lower left) > Save Preferences

  2. Take a screenshot of toolbars (Scrivener can’t save toolbar settings)

  3. Custom compile settings, project templates, and other stuff you’ve created can be found in folder C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Scrivener\Scrivener. I’m fairly sure that folder does NOT get cleared by the uninstall process, but you might want to make a copy of it just in case, prior to the uninstall.

  4. Uninstall Scrivener 1.9.16

  5. Download and install the last version that was working for you. Prior versions can be found here: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/release-notes?os=Windows

  6. Load your saved preferences, set your toolbars back as per your screenshot, copy in any templates from that backup you made of that folder.

treiter, I hope this gets you writing this weekend.

Best,
Jim

This sounds like my issue. Every time I open Scrivener it says mine is only a trial version and I need to enter my license.

This sounds like my problem. I first contacted L&L 8(!) days ago, and a second time three days ago. So far nothing. The product was great (for 4 years, until it locked me out), the customer service however is shockingly poor.

Hall, you need to check your spam filter, I suspect! In your case, we’ve responded to each and every message you’ve sent, in some cases within minutes, and we’ve yet to hear back from you.

You can alternatively create an account in our support system and access your tickets directly, making posts to them online, if you are finding email to be problematic.

Perhaps this pertains, perhaps not, but this was my experience. I was “locked out” of a prior version. What I did until the fix was respond to the dialog box with the email I used to buy Scrivener back in the dark ages, and the serial number I was given. This worked until .16 came out and I haven’t had the problem since. What’s weird is that the dialog box that popped up was clearly using the branding from the new, unreleased Windows version. I had the beta version installed at the time, so at first I thought that the two were interacting somehow.

Anyway, give your email and serial number a shot, perhaps it will work for you.

Yes, of course I tried entering my e-mail and serial number. It doesn’t work. I’ve tried about fifty different ways under the direction of the “technical support” team–absolutely no progress.

@JimRac, thanks for the tip about trying to install a previous version, but Literature and Latte seems to have removed all of the versions prior to .16. How helpful! Also, tech support didn’t tell me before they had me uninstall Scrivenver (about six times now) that none of my settings would be saved.

So I’ve been locked out for about a month now. Tech support has send about one e-mail per day, each one more useless than the next. They had me do the same thing several times–shocker, I got the same result. Now they seem to have given up. They refuse to give a refund.

What kind of company is this? They break my software, have substandard tech support, and now refuse to provide a refund. I’ve never had a worse experience with a software company, and all because of a deeply flawed DRM implementation. Sad.

@treiter The download link is still there for Scrivener 1.9.9, and I very much hope that is of some help.

literatureandlatte.com/down … taller.exe

I

Thanks much ComVox, I didn’t go back that far, I will give it a try.