Upgrade license when you don't have access to your older email addresses

Rhino Rhino for Windows
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In extreme frustration, I wrote a very angry email to support yesterday on this. I’ve since chilled a bit, but the actual situation hasn’t changed. (Also, I despise copy protection like this because it always gets in the way of legitimate users and does nearly nothing to stop volume piracy. It also means everyone’s “lifetime license” products turn into bricks if/when McNeel closes up shop or just decides to stop supporting the product, which has happened to me with some physical products and some software).

That all said, Rhino 8 is the first version to require an online account with verification. I never had an actual McNeel account until now.

I have two old custom domain email addresses to which my previous licenses are associated. (My Rhino 3 and 4/5 licenses were just CD keys, IIRC). My old email domain died a couple years ago when Google stopped allowing free custom domains with gmail so I no longer have access to those email accounts. I never bothered trying to update something with McNeel because I had no need to, and had no online account.

Yesterday, I bought the Rhino 8 upgrade. When I try to use it, I get stuck in a constant loop where I can’t add the old email address because I can’t verify the old email address, despite having all my license keys and knowing those email addresses, because I no longer have access to those email addresses. I tried through the web site, through the app, entering license keys for local PC-locked vs zoo (I actually tried every license key I have), but no go. Rhino won’t let me use the new purchased license because it thinks the old one is associated with someone else.

My current email is the one associated with this forum account.
Old email addresses: pete.brown@irritatedvowel.com, pmbrown@irritatedvowel.com

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When I click “forgot validation email” and then choose to send a recovery email, it must go to the old email address for some reason, either that or that process is just completely broken, because it says it sent the recovery email, but I receive nothing. And get this, it tells me my Rhino 8 upgrade is in use by another email address. How? I never changed that and Rhino hasn’t yet associated it with my old email. Looks like a bug.

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I wasted hours on this last night. Finally, I just used the window close button and was then able to get into Rhino (I wasn’t even aware this was possible) with a 5 day grace period and a bit of nagging each time I launch it.

So how do I get past this? Can the old licenses be moved to my new email address without a verification message to the old? Mailing address etc. are the same on all of them, in case that’s retained.

Pete

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I just a forum member, not a McNeel representative. I doubt there is anyone on this forum today who will be able to assist you. The usual response from McNeel folks similar questions is to contact the appropriate McNeel office during business hours and they will sort it out. The 5 day grace period will let you use Rhino 8 in the meantime.

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Yes, this is typical. The e-mail addresses associated with previous license keys and the upgrade key being applied over it have to be the same for security reasons. The procedure is for McNeel to change the e-mail addresses of the old licenses to match that of the new one.

This can only be sorted by McNeel directly, as they are the only ones who have access to the database. A simple e-mail to sales@mcneel.com will do it, or even a call during business hours. If you bought your license from a reseller, they can also handle this for you, although they still have to contact McNeel to do it. So it may not happen on weekends.

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Thanks.

I did see some McNeel folks on here yesterday (Saturday), so figured I’d post here anyway.

I had sent them an email yesterday. It wasn’t until hours into it that process that I found I could just click the window close button and be able to use Rhino. Before that, I was hitting cancel or otherwise using the provided options, which would result in Rhino saying it couldn’t start without a valid license and then just shutting down. It was amazingly frustrating up until I clicked that button. I didn’t know about the 5 day period until futzing with the licensing process all evening.

At the very least, the process should have a “register later” or similar option so people in my situation don’t waste all night messing with it.

As for email addresses: never a problem in the past because these were not verified in the same way. I’ve had a couple different email addresses before, and the first several revs were just CD keys. This is the first time I’ve had to create an account explicitly. I’ve been using Rhino since v3.

Not a fan of the new approach.

Pete

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hey pete, since your key involves some private info-
please send an email to tech@mcneel.com with your old address and the address you prefer to use. Make it attention to me, and I’ll be happy to try and get you sorted

I think I see the issue and should be able to help you sort it, but I’d rather finish up this issue in a private conversation so we protect all your info.

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Thanks Kyle. Message sent.

Pete

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Big thanks to Kyle for sorting this out over the weekend.

Pete

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Yep, and a lot of people were able to use multiple e-mail addresses to install and use the same single Rhino license on multiple computers simultaneously, so this was tightened up. So now to make sure that the entire upgrade path over multiple versions stays linked, all the licenses in that path need to have the same e-mail address associated with them. That implies McNeel having to manually update e-mail addresses on the older licenses if the e-mails have changed or are no longer in use.

In principle a Rhino account can help solve this kind of thing because you can have multiple e-mails associated with it and you can manage all that yourself without McNeel having to do anything. But Rhino accounts do not support V5 licenses or earlier - the software wasn’t made to do so - and the fact previous licenses might have been installed either fixed to a machine or floating in a Rhino account complicates things.

1 Like