I just took a break from scoring and put my Surface Pro into sleep mode. When I re-awakened it, it said that a USB device couldn’t be recognized. Since the only device plugged into my Surface was the dongle, I took it out and put it back in. Windows seemed to recognize it (device connected soundI. I then continued to write music without any problems.
After about 30 bars I wanted to do a save, but now Dorico gave me an error message that was obviously related to the dongle (something along the lines of “Product not activated”) and refused to save. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get Dorico to recognize the dongle. I tried copying the notes I had entered to the clipboard and pasting them into a new piece (which I could create no problem), but when pasting, Dorico crashed and had to be force-quit.
After a restart (and opening the file in the state of the last save), my last hope was to copy the notes from the clipboard. But Dorico seems to have cleared the clipboard on startup.
This is highly annoying. I understand the need for copy protection, but if it’s so flaky that it can’t tolerate a power-down and can’t recover from a situation where the dongle was removed for a second but reinserted immediately, and not even allows you to save your work in such a situation, that is extremely disappointing.
Oh, and even better: Now Dorico isn’t starting at all anymore, even with the dongle inserted. No error message, nothing.
I love this program. I despise the copy protection dongle. This isn’t the first time it has tripped me up, but before it was merely annoying (like displaying dozens of error message dialogs because I had removed the dongle before Dorico had fully shut down. (I keep forgetting the hub)…
How old is your Steinberg Key? Do you use the new (short), or the longer that came with earlier versions of Cubase? When I first started to use Dorico, I was using my old key that I first got with Cubase SX, and it didn´t work well with Dorico…or the new eLicenser software. I bought a new key, and my system with Cubase pro 9 and Dorico, has been rock solid ever since. You can also try to delete the eLicenser software, and install the latest version.
It’s the new one that came with Dorico. I’ll download the latest eLC version (I have 6.10.4, the latest seems to be 6.10.5).
I would like to clarify (after having slept on it and calmed down a bit) that I understand that the dongle must be present during the operation of Dorico, otherwise one could start Dorico on multiple PCs/Macs in quick succession and then work without a dongle. But if Dorico can’t find the dongle, it should maybe stop me from writing more music or doing playback or something else that’s non-destructive instead of preventing me from saving my work.
The latest eLC version seems to have solved a number of issues. Probably no help to you, but my dongle is over 15 years old and I’ve never had an issue with Cubase, HALion, or now Dorico.