Licensing / activation problem - just today`

[rfryer]

I have been running Max 2009 (64 bit version) on my main machine since last December. I'm on subscription, and my license is (said it was anyway) permanent.

Today when I ran it (it's been about a week since I've used it) - it says that there's a license error (License status . When I try to activate it it says there are no activations left (I have ONLY installed it on this one machine and activated it once (though it may have done activations in the background that I didn't notice). The few times I've wselected the 'about' key it's said that the license is permanent.

So I selected the 'www.autodesk.com/register' option in activation, I fill out a form and it takes me back to the 'get an activation code' page which says it's exceeded activations.

I turned off my eSATA backup drive just in case - but that wasn't the problem.

Microsoft did do a SP2 upgrade last week - does this invalidate the license? I have the same boot drive and data drive that I installed with last December. I have added another data drive but that was 6 months ago - it hasn't complained about the invalid license until today.

Please - Autodesk - don't get so paranoid that your paying customers get disgusted. On the other hand, what is my option???? *grin*

Any help would be appreciated. I couldn't find a phone number at autodesk to call and my calls to my subscription vendor (I won't name them - yet) has resulted in a 'don't call us - we'll call you' type of response (they call it 'Platinum' support for some reason).

Thanks folks.

[rfryer]

My vendor responded after a couple of calls - set up a 3way call with Autodesk Authorization.

The number is still (it was some posts here 16 months ago) 1-800-551-1490. The agent quickly emailed me an authorization that worked.

I asked if there was any clue of the cause of the problem. No - she agreed that it had only been authorized once.

Thanks to Autodesk for providing the phone backup to a slightly broken wizard.