30 day trial - unable to connect to activation server

Hello,
Sorry to hear you are having issues. The server might be down for maintenance. You can wait and try again later or use this method https://forums.stardock.com/486311/accounts-and-activation-support-faq#activatecommandprompt.

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

No, problem persists after retry.

Based on the info in the suggested FAQ page, the port 443 should be good in use in our company, as we can use https on browser. Any other idea?  thank you again.

Hello,

You can try the offline activation using guide mentioned here :

https://forums.stardock.com/486311/accounts-and-activation-support-faq#activateproduct

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

Thanks.  But I won't have the .req file as I am still at 30-day trial stage. Haven't actually purchased yet.

Any other thought?

Hello,
I have forward your problem/question to Stardock Support Team for their assistance. Please keep an eye on this thread for any updates. We appreciate your feedback and patience.

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

Hello,

Sorry to hear you are having trouble.

For problems with activation pertaining to a trial version, unfortunately, we do not currently have an offline activation system in place.

In lieu of being able to experience the trial, if you purchase the product (which does have an offline activation method), and it does not meet your needs, we will refund it.

Please let me know if you have any further questions/concerns.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

Just ran into this issue today, my guess is that Stardock activation does not support proxy.pac file / proxy server.

Since I can't use the trial, I will find another product. Trials shouldn't require activation, and activation shouldn't be harder than using the product.

Our trial activations are industry standard; you supply an email address, interact with the email, and it's then activated - again, pretty straightforward.

That said, if your proxy is preventing you from reaching activate.api.stardock.net, you will indeed have issues, with the trial or activation.  If possible, please edit your proxy to allow for this. 

I have written a script that is not exactly for this, but it's included in this documentation (its commented out, the proxy stuff, but you will get the idea).:

https://support.stardock.com/space/SHC/2588835961/InTune+Deployments  (the script is in the zips)

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

The world has moved on from trials storing a hidden value somewhere on the computer which users can delete and thus 'trial' the software forever.

Pretty much everyone treats a trial as a time limited activation now as it means a single code path used for activation and no need to make special 'trial' builds.

The link leads me to a blank page.

I have no idea what you mean by "editing the proxy" - there is no editing. It is either correct or it doesn't work.

Thanks, the link worked. Based on the script, it seems that activation might support a proxy server where it doesn't work properly with a proxy.pac file, so I temporarily bypassed the proxy.pac to go  straight to the proxy server and it activated the trial. Hopefully it won't complain later since I had to put the proxy.pac file back.

But large enterprises still use proxy.pac files instead of straight proxies and properly written code should work with it.