Quote:
Originally Posted by Redbeard
I'm a software developer myself. Due to my job, I am frequently needing to reinstall a fresh OS on my work computer. Every time this happens, I have to contact you in order to have my licence reissued.
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Our system is designed with a *typical* consumer in mind. There will always be the non-standard exceptions for which any system works poorly. If you frequently need to reinstall a fresh O/S, you are definitely *not* a typical consumer. Decrying the DRM used within AB because it works poorly for your very non-standard environment seems a bit disingenuous to me.
That being said, there are a number of techniques you can use that will either minimize or outright eliminate the problem. You just need to ensure that the computer's identity remains the same.
Here are some possible options that will probably solve the situation for you.
1. Use Norton's Ghost software to take a snapshot of your computer once the O/S and common applications are fully installed, but before installing whatever software regularly changes. Then you can restore from the snapshot and eliminate all the overhead of reiinstalling everything.
2. Use the system backup capability built into Windows 7 to take a snapshot of your computer once the O/S and common applications are fully installed. As above, you can then restore from the backup to get running more quickly than re-installing everything.
3. If you have VMWare at work, setup a virtual machine to run AB within.
4. If you cannot use one of the above approaches and you're installing the *same* version of the operating system on the same computer, there's one other option. Make sure that you use the same product key to activate Windows, name the computer the same every time, and ensure your configuration options are setup the same (e.g. user accounts and such). If you do all this, it is likely (although not guaranteed) that all the pieces used to determine your computer's identity will be the same.
With options 1-3, AB will always generate the same identity for your computer. That means you merely need to go to the License menu and select the Reactivate License option whenever you re-install AB. With option 4, the identity will likely remain the same, in which case the same applies.
Hope this helps....