Upgrading Cubase 5 to 12

I recently upgraded my Cubase 5 with the intention of keeping cubase 5 working on my old system, as I use that as well for special clients that need my old sample library and plugins. To my complete terror, I now find out that my elicenser says I only have 24 hours of operating time on Cubase 5 as a trial. How is that possible? I need my Cubase 5 to work permanently. Please help to resolve this issue. I need my Cubase 5 as much as or even more than Cubase 12, until I have it setup perfectly to suit my needs. By the way, the sample library is very limited and not of great quality as I expected.

Did you run Maintenance on that elicenser?

Is it the latest version for that OS?

If you don’t hide your system info, you might get better answers. The main thing is to remain calm.

After verifying the stuff above, please post a screenshot of the Elicenser.

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Hello Ronny,
I understand that you did an upgrade from Cubase 5, with the idea to save some money on the Cubase 12 price.
So, might be the wrong choice.
I recommend to contact support and explain your situation. I expect you can still ‘revert’ your purchase into a 'full - new- Cubase 12 license.
Please keep the forum posted about this, I think there are others out there that may might the same ‘mistake’ as you did.
Cheers!

It’s possible to upgrade from Cubase 5 to Cubase Pro 12. He didn’t do anything wrong if he purchased the correct upgrade. The issue here is that his old system can’t see his upgraded license, because the eLicenser database isn’t up to date.

If your old system is running Windows 7 or later (or recent versions of MacOS), please download the latest eLicenser Control Center, run it, and click the Maintenance button to the top right.
https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-us/articles/360008841379

If it’s running Windows XP or Vista (or older versions of OS X), the eLicenser database must be updated manually. Please carefully follow the instructions in this page:
https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-us/articles/206651990-License-missing-in-eLicenser-Control-Center-or-named-incorrectly

Hello Romantique_Tp,

In my experience (and I bought upgrades for Cubase since Cubase 10), I always lost the ‘old version’ license in favor of the new license bought.
So if one wants to keep using Cubase 5 (or whatever old version), he has to buy a new, ‘second’ Cubase license. (But correct me if I am wrong).
Just to make sure: Read the initial message of Ronny starting this post.

But it’s different now with Steinberg Licensing. An update to the current version from one that uses the Elicenser leaves a license for that old version on the dongle or Soft elicenser. This allows current customers to continue to use the older versions as long as the dongle or elicenser functions.

Indeed.

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His Cubase 5 license will be upgraded to Cubase 11 (last elicenser version) and stay that way forever and he also will get a new Cubase 12 license, correct? If this is true, he will be able to open Cubase 5 (and 6, 6.5, 7, and so on) using his Cubase 11 license.

I upgraded from Cubase 11 and still have my license in the dongle as an extra (can’t be upgrade again), and the Cubase 12 under new system.

Yes I did see on my Steinberg page, that it said I had upgraded from version 11 to 12, which I found a little odd, since I have never owned Cubase 11, but I figured it was a technical formality of some kind. It would be really nice if there was a solution to keep an old hardware setup with Cubase 5 to run special jobs.

You will be able to use that Cubase 11 license to open Cubase 5. This is the solution you are asking for. That Cubase 11 license is still fully functional.

And you can use Cubase 12 under the new license system. You have now 2 licenses (11 and 12).

This is great information, I am also upgrading from C5, (which I love) to 12. Just purchased but not installed yet. Thanks for posting all this.

Ok, thanks for the info… I’m also willing to upgrade from C5 to C12, given the interesting price for the upgrade.
I’m now seriously in doubt since I would love to keep C5 for the synths and my unfinished work with these synths, but I’m not willing to pay the full price for a C12…
I have to think twice about this…

You can have both on your system :slight_smile:

Also, there are some threads somewhere in here on how to use some of the discontinued synths in C12, maybe they will be helpful to you.