shauge

It took a VPN connection via a VPN server in London to get this to work for me. I first tried tethering via USB to my iPhone after having configured my iPhone as a hotspot (relatively easy; I of course first disabled my regular cable connection), but that made no difference. That told me my router & ISP probably had nothing to do with it, as I'd suspected, and that the whole port forwarding thing was a waste of time - no surprise there. OK - I had been thinking about trying a VPN connection. I often have issues with connecting to webmail back in the states when I'm traveling overseas, which the VPN overcomes. Many countries, not just China, impose all manner of filtering and blocking at the national boundary (the Law of Unintended Consequences applies), and a VPN allows the VPN user's traffic through that via encrypted tunneling. There are a few different VPN protocols in common use - one or the other usually solves these problems. My particular VPN service offers servers all around the world, so I decided to try connecting using a server in London. And THAT WORKED! Conclusion: the Activation software PMDG is using can have issues for foreign customers trying to connect. 'Won't always be true of course, and no way I could identify which countries will or won't be affected. I'm in the US, and I definitely was. If I hadn't happened to have the VPN option available to me, I'm not sure I could ever have activated the software successfully.

I have definitely - oh very definitely - been in touch with PMDG and know precisely what port forwarding means. It was their suggestion and I was skeptical the moment I saw it (but they claim it has helped some customers...). I monitored, and found the port number mentioned is on their server (as I expected), that it's an outbound connection, and that the whole port forwarding thing was just a red herring. OK, but he says they've had over 100 successful activations today and that there's NO indication of any incoming traffic (i.e., product activation requests from me) on their end. So I'm a little mystified. Something somewhere is apparently blocking or preventing the connection, even if it's actually the activation utility within their software itself. It's also true that I can't ping the server. Ping does resolve the IP address to fqdn (and vice versa), but then times out. But so do all of their other servers, even though I have absolutely no trouble accessing them (the software was purchased and downloaded from PMDG, and I have an open trouble ticket which I've no difficulty opening or updating). The activation attempts, on the other hand, fail immediately, almost instantaneously from the moment I hit the 'Activate' button, as a matter of fact.

I've been advised that the problem is blocked access to their activation server. Seriously, I've disabled every possible security application on my PC, created exceptions/exclusions in MSE, turned off the Windows firewall, and punched a hole in my router firewall for their license... server and set up port forwarding for it. Still no dice. I'm on a plain vanilla residential Roadrunner cable connection, and had no problem purchasing the software at the online store, downloading it, submitting a trouble ticket, or (obviously) accessing this forum. Anybody else had this problem? Any other thoughts. Oh, and no, there was never any 'blocked...' notice from my PC. Just a window telling me that the activation server couldn't be accessed (and to check my internet connection), followed by another one telling me my license is invalid.

I also have the activation issue and have submitted a ticket. The first advisory that appears indicates that the activation server could not be contacted (and to check my internet connection, which is fine). So perhaps the server's offline and, this being a holiday weekend, the situation will be remedied after the opening bell tomorrow. (But the other thing the notice tells me is that my product activation code is invalid, so wondering...)

I had to try 8 times before I finally entered the correct "registration code" to prove I was human. OK - use the Captcha or whatever, but don't make it so illegible that even a real human can't read it! I think my final successful entry was more luck than anything else. The audio option was no better and equally garbled up and inaudible. Come on - please be reasonable!