Solutions to activation error messages

Encountering errors when entering activating your products can be frustrating. This guide will help you understand the common causes of activation errors and provide solutions to ensure a smooth activation process. If you find that none of the solutions in this guide solve your activation issue, please do no hesitate to reach out to our dedicated Customer Success Team.

Common causes and solutions

The following information will help you diagnose and solve activation common activation error messages. Please follow the directions below, or if you require additional support, please reach out to our Customer Success team (link below in Additional support section)

Activation errors due to incorrect or invalid product keys

Error messages encountered:

1. "We are unable to get a license from the activation server. Please check the accuracy of the product key, and try again."
2. "We were unable to get a license from the activation server. Check for extra characters in the product key and retry."
3. "Activation cannot be completed. Please try again.”

Solutions:

Common reasons these error messages are encountered include the product key not being entered correctly. Please re-enter your product key, and make sure that they key and format matches correctly. For more information and solutions to these errors, please reference Invalid product key or serial number error during software activation. 

Activation failed error messages

Error messages encountered:

1. "Activation cannot be completed. Please try again.”

2. "Unable to complete activation.“

3.  "Activation failed. Please try again."

Solutions:

In most cases when you see the Activation Failed message when attempting to activate a Surfer, Grapher or Strater license, it is because the software cannot communicate with Golden Software's activation server.

The most common reasons are:

1. Your company is using a version of the software from prior to us releasing a critical licensing update. Versions prior to this update can no longer activate or deactivate online normally. More information on this update can be found here: Security compliance update for Surfer, Grapher, Strater, and License Administrator.
2. Your company's internet security system is blocking access to the activation server.  Ask your IT department to whitelist "golden.prod.sentinelcloud.com" for both HTTP (port 80) and HTTPS (port 443) to resolve this error.
3. Your computer's antivirus software is blocking access to "golden.prod.sentinelcloud.com".  Check your antivirus logs to confirm if this is true.
4. Your company requires that you use a proxy server to access the internet, and that proxy server requires separate authentication from your Windows authentication.  Ask your IT department if there is a way to allow your program to access "golden.prod.sentinelcloud.com" without requiring separate authentication.  We currently do not offer custom proxy configuration.  Our programs rely on the Windows proxy server settings.
5. Your computer is never connected to the Internet.  Internet access is required to activate online.  Optionally, you can activate your license by following the steps at this article: Activate your software on an offline computer

Activation errors due to maximum activations reached

Error messages encountered:

1. "Unable to activate the product key. Activation cannot be performed as the quantity is not sufficient."
2. “Your product key has already been activated [# of times], which is the maximum activations allowed. To activate your product key on this computer, you must first deactivate one of the prior activations through My Account."

3. "This product key has been activated the maximum number of times allowed. To activate on this computer, please first deactivate this license online or from another computer."

4. “The product key has been activated the maximum number of times allowed. Browse to myaccount.goldensoftware.com to view activations for this product key.”

Potential reasons:

• You have already activated the maximum number of times with this product key.
• You reinstalled or reimaged Windows before deactivating the license. Now you have an orphaned activation.
• The computer crashed/died/was replaced. Now you have an orphaned activation.
• One of the standard locking criteria changed on your computer to cause the previously activated license to be invalid. These locking criteria lock the license to the computer. If any of those change, that activation is no longer valid and the license must be activated again. The previous license becomes orphaned.

Solutions:

Deactivate your product key through my account, and reactivate normally in the software. For instructions on how to do so, please visit Deactivate your Golden Software license.

Activation errors mentioning no internet connection

These errors have a dedicated page to reasons the errors are encountered, and solutions to those reasons. For more information on these activation errors, please visit Solutions to the error "You must have Internet access to activate your license".

Additional Support

Golden Software is dedicated to ensuring a one-of-a-kind experience with our products. If you continue to face issues or need further clarification on activation errors you've encountered, please reach out to our dedicated Customer Success Team. We're here to help you get your Golden Software products up and running smoothly.

Updated August 2023