So this is a little ridiculous now. It's now been a whole day of trying to get these to work and despite a support ticket sent almost 24 hours ago, still no response. Pretty shocking for a company trying to sell plugins for several hundred dollars each! Do they not realise people trial stuff not just to test the product, but also to test the company's customer service, professionalism, and so on?!

Anyway, I did a deep uninstall of everything UAD, such as UA Connect, plugins, etc, and also a deep uninstall of everything PACE/iLok. I used IObit Uninstaller Pro to remove everything, and then double checked the registry and cleaned out anything that remained. I then ran CCleaner Pro to clean everything out and fixed any registry issues related to UAD and PACE software. That means there was zero trace of anything. I restarted my machine.

I have now downloaded the latest UA Connect and reinstalled, which obviously installed the PACE iLok software too. I then logged into both, reinstalled a couple of the plugins, and still they are not licensed or authorising. Seriously, what the actual f....????? I'm getting so frustrated by this and already wasted a day of my life on it!

Here is UA Connect, with all plugins activated and available for download, with the Studer A800 downloaded and installed:



Here is UA Connect, showing the correct iLok user connected to the UAD account:



Here is UA Connect showing it's been set to store licenses to iLok Cloud:



Here is iLok, showing the same user logged in, with the licenses in iLok Cloud showing as activated throughout. with the Studer A800 showing with 1 of 2 activations used:



iLok does have an "Activate" and "Deactivate" button (in yellow circle above), which also shows when I right-click on a product, which I'm confused by as it's showing as active already, so how and why would I have a selectable "Activate" option? When I click it, it opens a prompt window, being the below, so I assume this is to activate the second available license to a USB dongle (if I owned one, which I don't)?



I'm now literally out of options. I have no idea what else I can try to get these to work?!?!?!

 

Try this: Troubleshooting Native UAD Activation Issues (and Blurred GUI) – Universal Audio Support Home (uaudio.com)

 

That's the same troubleshooting video and steps already in my original post that's been tried (about 3 times!).

 

Damn... that's some gremlins stuff going on with your Spark plugins. I sincerely hope you will sort it out.
Today I had problems when updating iLok License Manager on my laptop. Installation failed 10 times and drove me crazy.
Turned out it was probably antivirus software. When I deactivated it ILM succesufully installed.

Go figure

 

Now ILM work only for 64 bit systems? (my experience)

 

Bunford,
Do not torment the cat, you have net problems on your pc, $250 аnd you have them all, perpetual )

 

Have you tried booting cleanly, with your firewall/s completely disabled/Stopped from Startup upon reboot? Are you running two firewall applications? Sometimes they begin running some processes/services, etc. even with them disabled the normal ways. (especially good old Zone Alarm, iirc). Can you also create a FW rule which explicitly allows the UAD and iLok software?

Something like this could be happening: https://windowsreport.com/firewall-disabled-still-blocking/
Just as an example, i'm not on PC. It shows using MSconfig, startup items, etc. You think it is not blocking, but it has it's own ideas.

Have you tried cleaning up using Revo Uninstaller instead of CC Cleaner? I have seen people have some better luck with Revo in instances like this.

I would just spend the 20 bucks for a usb dongle if it keeps up. Personally, there is almost no way i would deal with UAD. For anything.

 

Last edited: Jun 30, 2023

try activating to your computer instead of the cloud... that could be the issue? Idk because I use my dongle

 

I don't think iLok allows computer hardware activation do they? It's only iLok Cloud or iLok USB as far as I understand?!

 

I have no firewall except the standard, and checked in there and there's no rules blocking UA nor iLok. I will try to create explicit rules to allow these two though.

I have deep cleaned, as stated above, using IObit Uninstaller Pro (similar software to Revo) and CCleaner Pro.

 

Hmmm I am not sure if activating to the computer is only possible with a dongle in. But it may be worth a try to deactivate the cloud activations and try re activating on the computer. It should pop up with a location you want to authorize on (cloud, dongle or machine)

 

That should work as well as Revo. I only noticed the CC Cleaner part, which many people review as a less thorough option. There are lots of websites/ads that try to sell that program to Mac users, with all sorts of fantastic claims about it; when we do not need it at all.

 

This is what @Dave_Music posted earlier in the thread. You can see all the greyed out Computer icons in one of the screenshots.

It is not iLok not allowing hardware activations, it is UAD not allowing it because you are using a subscription cloud service.

 

I see it only allows dongle and cloud activations, but what is the difference between a dongle activation and a machine activation? what makes the dongles allowable but machine activation is not allowed?

 

It's more difficult for "hackers" to edit the code of an external USB than a machine based authorization agent. So uad restricted authorization to cloud/external only to protect their product.

The dongle/cloud has a specific encryption key that is not available on the machine and the plugins check for the key every few minutes.

 

Last edited: Jun 30, 2023

I've now tried to clean everything and uninstall again, reinstall everything as admin to default locations, added inbound and outbound firewall rules for iLok and UA Connect, and still showing as plugins not licensed?!?!

 

Total long shot, but have you done anything in your hosts file to block either UAD or iLok web addresses because of other hacked plugins? See if you can ping their domains in cmd/terminal.

My only experience with iLok is UVI products, and they are nothing like this bs. You go into the iLok and UVI portal softwares and authorize and then link them. It is two separate actions. But then that is it. Have you verified your account informations are all perfectly typed in with no errors? My serum email has an extra letter in it and it drove me nuts like this.

Are you using any R2R software products that are normally iLok? What about any PACE applications you may have installed or modified?

I would have tried my other computer a page ago. You have one you can try with?

 

Last edited: Jun 30, 2023

Good shout! I just tried removing my hosts file and replacing with the original, totally unpopulated hosts file, and it made no difference. Everything still unlicensed, so definitely nothing to do with my hosts file.

 

I didn't think it would because you wouldn't have gotten as far along as your screenshots show. I would fire up terminal/cmd and run a traceroute to the two websites and see if there is anything irregular or any hops timing out. After that, you basically know it is something to do with the software and account informations, rather than network connectivity. not 100%, but more or less.

Take the following steps to run a traceroute in Microsoft® Windows®:

1. Press Windows key + R to open the Run window.
2. Enter cmd and press Enter to open a Command Prompt.
3. Enter tracert, a space, then the IP address or web address for the destination site (for example: tracert www.lexis.com).
4. Press Enter.

You have a free account made on iLok website? https://www.ilok.com/#!signin

And UAD Website? I would try logging in to both of them at the same time you try doing anything with the software manager programs too.

Why is UA Connect not working?
Most issues with UAConnect can be resolved by clearing your browser's history/cache.

A reddit result:

"same issue and they told me to first close all Cloud Sessions (under Files in the iLok LM) and then logging in again. For me it worked after just doing that. Here's everything the UA support wrote:

1. Log into iLok License manager using the iLok ID that's linked to your UA account.
   Note: If you don't know your iLok you can go to uaudio.com/my/ilok and it will show you the iLok ID associated with your account.
   
   
2. Go to File > Open Cloud Session
   Note: If Cloud Session is already open click "Close Your Cloud Session" or "Close All Cloud Sessions" and click "Open Cloud Session" after.
   
   
3. Click on the iLok ID location in blue on the top left corner and then click the "All Licenses" tab.
   
   
4. Find the Spark License in the "All Licenses" view and right click on it and click "Activate."
   Note: Make sure the license you've chosen to activate is not expired
   
   
5. Select your Activation location. If you are using an iLok USB you can select that or if you are using iLok Cloud you can select the Cloud. Then click "Activate."
   

 

Last edited: Jun 30, 2023

I just tried to close all cloud sessions, sign out of iLok, close UA Connect, as the troubleshooting suggests (and as tried about 72 times already). I then updated iLok as there's an update compared to what UA Connect installs. I then signed back into iLok and started cloud session and back into UA Connect, and still didn't fix it. However, it's got even weirder now!

One of my plugins (the Space Echo) now doesn't have the red box and says "Demo Active - 89 Days" but is still blurred and unusable, whilst other still have the red box saying "Plugin Not Licensed". I mean, WTF?! Why would one recognise trial status but others don't?! And if recognising trial status, why is it still blurred and unusable?!



Closing and re-opening Cubase knocks it back into "Plugin Not LIcensed" though: