Hi.
I’m an Autodesk subscription customer of 3ds Max Design. I own 3ds Max Design 2010, 2009 and 3ds Max 2008 commercial standalone licenses.
I recently replaced my 320 GB Maxtor hard disk, in which I stored my Autodesk standalone licenses, due to mechanical loss, and then installed my softwares in a new 500 GB Samsung HD. I installed 3ds Max 2008 first, and all of its hotfixes and patches, and tried to put the serial number in it when it asks for it, during installation process. But when I did put my serial number (not the original one which is written on the cd box, but a second one that Autodesk provided me when I migrated to 3ds Max Design), when I did put the serial number at the request window, it gave me “invalid serial number” error or something like that, and reset it to 000-0000000, as trial mode. So, after installing, I tried to execute the operation on the web (Autodesk register once...), but it gave me “invalid serial number” error. Exactly the same thing happened with 3ds Max Design 2009. By the way, 3ds Max Design didn’t accept the last serial number that Autodesk provided me after migration to Max Design! No way, neither on the web! So I performed the complete installations of the two versions, 2008 and Design 2009, and then moved to the Autodesk subscription PREVIOUS VERSIONS REQUEST page, for asking a NEW serial number. But I did a mistake, because I wrote the cd-box numbers into the fields. And what did they give me? They gave me exactly the last two serial numbers (one for 2008 and the other one for Design 2009) that I already owned. So I had to do the request once again, for 2008 and Design 2009 new serial numbers.
While I was waiting to receive them, I installed 3ds Max Design 2010, and activated it without any problem, it’s working fine at start up (but I’m announcing here a serious trouble I have with this last version of Max Design, implying system crash with blue screen.... I’ll soon write about it, not really here!). I also installed AutoCAD 2010, a student version (I’m an AutoCAD teacher), and everything worked fine. I installed nothing else, that’s was enough.

Finally, they sent me the new serial for my Max, and this time I obtained ONE NEW SERIAL NUMBER, just one, only one. I did want to verify which version that number was for, and so I moved to the Autodesk register page. It said: Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2009. So I suppose they forgot my 3ds Max 2008 right of usage, covered by subscription contract. But THAT’S NOT THE MAIN PROBLEM.

Here’s the TROUBLE. I then double clicked on 3ds Max Design 2009 desktop icon to perform the activation. But what does it happen? It CRASHES! It crashes and crashes again with error report (I sent it twice). The same occurs when I try to activate it from the inside of the program.
AND THE SAME OCCURS for 3ds Max 2008. No information about the license is provided inside the Help Menu.
I contacted Autodesk and they wrote me nothing interesting.
What d’you suppose I’m gonna do?

ok, many thanks. Sorry I posted twice. Hope I’ll get suggestions. Bye

Here’s the TROUBLE. I then double clicked on 3ds Max Design 2009 desktop icon to perform the activation. But what does it happen? It CRASHES! It crashes and crashes again with error report (I sent it twice). The same occurs when I try to activate it from the inside of the program.
AND THE SAME OCCURS for 3ds Max 2008. No information about the license is provided inside the Help Menu.
I contacted Autodesk and they wrote me nothing interesting.

So what did Autodesk say?

And at what point is MD2009 crash?  Do you see the splash screen, does it get to the activation page, does it just stall immediately and crash?

I would maybe suggest installing the packages one at a time, and activate the first before installing the next to see if that works.  That would at least elminate the possibility that it is the multiple versions interfering with the proper authorization.

3DS Max Design 2011 64-bit - Advantage Pack
Dell Precision T5500, Dual Six Core Xeon X5650 @ 2.67GHz, nVidia Quadro 5000, 24 GB RAM, Win 7 Enterprise 64-bit
Minneapolis, MN, USA

Can you provide more information?

What OS are you running now?  Did you change OS’s since everything worked?

Do you run more than one OS?

Was the hard disk you replaced a secondary drive, or did it have the OS on it?  Are you using the same physical boot disk as before?

When you get a crash in max, the first thing to check is the system requirements for that particular version, and also your general system health.  It’s often caused by a problem with Internet Explorer, which is used for registration and activation.

--Cy--

Autodesk gives me the instructions to activate the program from the inside, but they are wrong and refers to old menus… Anyway it ain’t possible doing it.

From your first post, it sounds like you put in a new hard disk (boot drive), installed 2008, and got an error.

Did you copy over your previous disk from a partition image?  Did you reinstall the OS, or not?

With a new HD and a clean install of the OS, there’s no reason any of the installations should fail.  If you copy over an old partition image, that’s another thing altogether.

When you have multiple product versions and need to reinstall, I recommend that you install them in the order they were released, to be 100% sure that no common DLLs are downgraded.  In any case, this is the way that the installations are tested.

--Cy--