Soft eLicenser deactivated, cannot submit support ticket

Inexplicably my Dorico 3.5 license has been deactivated.

Dorico itself won’t start most of the time (it doesn’t even bring up the splash menu), and when it does it asks for my activation code, which I provide. From that point it says I need to repair the license in ELCC.

When I attempt to do so in ELCC it says that the repair failed and that I need to download the latest version of ELCC, or it will claim that programs are currently open and preventing it from repairing. I have now uninstalled and reinstalled ELCC three times, and the problems persist.

I cannot submit a support ticket through My Steinberg as My Support only contains a list of distributors/resellers for Steinberg products and nowhere to open a support request.

As someone who has recently switched over from a very straightforward Sibelius license, I’m very frustrated at not just my license suddenly no longer working for no good reason, but the impossibility of getting even an email that I can send this issue to in lieu of making a public forum post. I know I’m just screaming into the void when I say this, but Steinberg DRM practices are a serious blight on what is otherwise a very fine product.

On Windows, I know that eLicenser Control Center sometimes has to be “Run as Administrator” in order for repairs to be successful. if you are running Windows, have you tried that?

Try this link:
https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-us/articles/4404472502674-License-server-outage
There is a “Submit a ticket” button towards the bottom of the page.

I did try running as admin a few times - interestingly, it gives me a “Process with the ID NOT found” error and doesn’t let me do anything except for quit the application. This has happened across multiple reinstalls and computer reboots.

Unfortunately, that “Submit a Ticket” button just takes me to the My Support page in My Steinberg, which again doesn’t offer a ticket option.

Inexplicably working again, but I don’t know how long that will last. Apart from spending an hour reinstalling everything and going in circles, is there anything else that I need to do stop this from happening? Everything is fully updated, Dorico is being run as administrator…

It might be related to the license server issues they were having.

Although the eLicenser system is not great for notation software (where you might want to allow the person to use the software on two systems without moving a dongle back and forth), for what it is worth, I have been a Cubase user since 2005 or so and have used the eLicenser throughout that entire time and never personally had an issue that would prevent me from working.

I know many others have had issues with it, most of them seem to be related to the move of eLicenser from a 32-bit to a 64-bit architecture. It was around that time that a lot of users seemed to experience problems.

I have had a few minor issues with repair of the software eLicenser, but for me all of those were related to some major Windows version upgrade causing an issue.

I know Steinberg is actively working on a new licensing system for Dorico that will be less draconian than the eLicenser system, and it is a priority for them.

I had problems with my Dorico license a couple of months ago, but I managed to open a ticket through My Steinberg and the support staff was very helpful and solved the issue. If I go to My Support now, I get the following form where I can enter my support request. Don’t you see the same form? Are you correctly logged in?