Re: SN Not Valid: A Non-Fiction Novella by Emily Berk

[Jo Francis Byrd <jbyrd -at- byrdwrites -dot- com>]

Emily,

It's just possible that Adobe gave you a bad serial number. I bought FM a few
years ago, had fits installing it, kept telling me bad serial number, when I
FINALLY got in touch with Adobe (or whoever it was that owned it at the time), I
learned that my LEGAL, correctly bought FM had been assigned a license number
already assigned to someone else! They had to assign me a new one, and it was a
PAIN.

Good luck!

Jo Byrd


Berk/Devlin wrote:

Chapter 1

                              Summary:  Grade D-
                  Elapsed time: 6 hours and not yet installed.

Well, I bought the upgrade in July.  But my clients at the time did not want to
upgrade and I did not want to rock the boat.  So, I kept the CD sealed, with the
security plastic intact, in its nice jewel box in the nice box with the
documentation, on a dry, dust-free, room-temperature shelf in my office.

And today, because I have a client who wants me to use FrameMaker 6.0, and wants
results soon, I ventured into the unknown.  Installing the upgrade to FM 5.5.6.

Guys, I have a degree in computer science.  I can program in assembly language.
But, after 6 hours, I have not gotten past the screen that tells me I've entered
an invalid serial number.

I did the hard part first.  I broke the seal using my handy tiny screwdriver.
Did not even scratch the case.  I did not even drag too far, as I often do, and
stab myself in the left hand.  No blood on the jewel case.  Little did I know
that THAT was to be the high point of my day.

Then, I placed the CD, label UP in my CD drive drawer.  And, closed the drawer.
The little yellow light began to flash.  And a rectangle on the bottom right
appeared.  From the start it read, "InstallShield 99% loaded."

And, then, it sat there.  For about ten minutes.  I am NOT exaggerating.  Every
once in a while, the yellow light on the CD drive flashed, to give me hope.

After ten minutes, I decided, well, maybe my CD reader is not working.  Opened
the drawer.  It told me the drive was in use, but I insisted on ejecting the disk
anyway.  I picked the disk up, looked for scratches.  None.  Put the disk back
in, label up.  Closed the drawer again.

Repeated this procedure a number of times.  Wiped the CD once in a while.
Sometimes after I'd close the drawer, it would say, "CD not found."  Sometimes it
would not complain.  I rebooted a few times and tried
the procedure again.

Eventually, I thought, well, maybe there's another problem.  I deleted stuff from
my hard drive (maybe it needs more than 13 GB...???)  I de-fragged the hard drive
(maybe it's taking too long to hit the CD drive while it tries to copy files to
my extremely fragmented hard drive...)  Well that took a few hours.

Then, I decided, "Well, maybe the InstallShield really does need half an hour to
load."  (I've got a 1.5 year-old Pentium III with 384 MB of Ram, but hey there
are faster machines ...)  So, I started up the InstallShield, and it said, as is
its wont, 99% loaded.  I waited 10 minutes.  Still 99% loaded.  I went out to
dinner.  I came back and it asked me what language.  Progress.  I don't know if
it took 11 minutes or 45 minutes.  But WHOOPEE it loaded.

But, then came the hard part.  It asked me to enter the serial number.  Now, I
don't have much experience at typing in serial numbers.  I only install like
several hundred computer programs a year.  But hey, I can copy in a stupid,
hexadecimal, separated-by-hyphens number.  So, not knowing the frustration that
awaited me, I found the number as advertised on the back of the jewel case and
typed it in.  No extra spaces, with hyphens.

Got a message that said, "Invalid serial number."

Hey, I'm a BSE in Computer Science Engineering.  But I do make mistakes.  I typed
the number in again.

Message says, "Invalid serial number."

So, I typed it in AGAIN.

Message says, "Invalid serial number."

My partner's in the room.  I say, "I'll read you the numbers; you type it in."  I
read.  He types.

Message says, "Invalid serial number."  We spend some time comparing the numbers
on the jewel case with those on the screen.

He says, "Maybe you have to enter the serial number of the previous release." He
reads; I type.

Message says, "Invalid serial number."

OK.  It's 5:02 pm PST.  Customer service closes at: 5 pm.

So, I go to the Web site.  Go to the knowledge base.  I cannot believe I am
searching for information about the d&%%*())-ed serial number.

You should try this, though.  It's really interesting.  If you search for

     invalid serial number FrameMaker

You get 1510 hits!

None of the ones I looked at mention FrameMaker serial numbers.

The first one I read had to do with users of PageMaker getting Invalid Serial
Number errors, however.

They were supposed to:

1.  Enter the correct serial number, which is found on the back of the jewel
case, or on the registration card.  With hyphens and no spaces. 2.  If it's an
upgrade, enter the correct serial number, but try putting a
space at the beginning.

So, I tried this.  An hour later, "Invalid Serial Number".

Back to the knowledgebase.  Did I tell you that in the knowledgebase the next
page link is only at the top?  So, you have to scroll down the whole page to read
all the possibilities, and then, when you do not find any
links that are relevant, you have to scroll back to the top to get to the next
page link.

And, it gets better.  I read through 200 of the 1501 records returned.  Not one
of them referred to Invalid serial numbers in FrameMaker, although there were
Invalid Serial Number problems with every other Adobe product I
have ever heard of, and they went all the way back to early in 1998 and all the
way forward to 2001.  However, on the page that ended at record 200, the next
page link was disabled.

One of the Invalid Serial Numbers pages indicated that if the user could not
enter a valid serial number, it was probably bad hardware.  Sigh.

At this point, I'm thinking of migrating to MS Word.

I'm going to go try to mellow out now so I don't start screaming from the moment
I call Customer Support in the morning.

Thanks for listening.

Chapter 2 -- tomorrow?

--Emily


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Develop HTML-Based Help with Macromedia Dreamweaver 4 ($100 STC Discount)
**WEST COAST LOCATIONS** San Jose (Mar 1-2), San Francisco (Apr 16-17)
http://www.weisner.com/training/dreamweaver_help.htm or 800-646-9989.

Sponsored by ForeFront, Inc., maker of ForeHelp Help authoring tools
for print, WinHelp, HTML Help, JavaHelp, and cross-platform InterHelp
See www.forehelp.com for more information and free evaluation downloads

---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot-  Visit 
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.