I’ve searched through the forums here and various places on Autodesk’s website to no avail.  I installed our Animation Academy package (3ds, Maya, Mudbox, Motionbuilder, Sketchbook) on one station with Windows 7 Ultimate.  Previously this station ran the programs under Vista x64.  All of the programs run fine except for 3ds, which won’t activate.  I tried to manually get a code from register.autodesk.com and the Autodesk Authorization Center to no avail.  They referred me to the forums and knowledgebase.  I see other posts regarding specific issues that people have had once in 3ds Max on Windows 7, so there must be some way to activate it.  I’m not sure how this can be when Autodesk is the entity that needs to generate the code and even their own authorization center can’t do it.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Are you getting a specific error message?  Please give more details about what steps you go through in the installation process.

I’m unclear why register.autodesk.com wouldn’t work; obviously the server has no knowledge of the OS where max is running.

--Cy--

Thanks for your reply.  When trying to activate through 3ds Max’s activation system, it says the serial number is invalid.  It is valid and being used in 2 computer labs (we have 128 licenses and are only using 60 or so).  When I login to register.autodesk.com, I enter the serial number and then get the request code screen.  I put the request code in and it says it’s an invalid code.  I don’t ever manually type these codes in due to error, but copy/paste them.  As part of my dealings with Autodesk, I double checked the request code.

I just had an idea and will post with my solution if it pans out.  When I installed Windows 7, it gave me the upgrade option and copied the Program Files and Windows directories to Windows.old.  I noticed that when I reinstalled 3ds Max and the rest that the folder structure was still there.  I didn’t delete anything and installed 3ds Max into the same folder as before.  It might be generating a funky code from some Vista files mixed into a Windows 7 OS.  I am theorizing this because after I noticed this, I deleted the content in the Maya, Mudbox, and Motionbuilder folders before installing.  Those are all not having issues.

Mike