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[dosu66]

Hi,

I just downloaded this yesterday, and love it so far. However, when I started it up today, an update was installed and then my trial dropped from 29 days to 10 days.

Any ideas? I like this a lot, possibly even more than my current media Monkey, but I don't like being told I'm getting 30 days only to lose most of it a day later.

[JimH]

It could be your system date, but don't try changing anything, or you could end up with zero.

[dosu66]

So, am I not going to get the 30 day trial I was promised? I write for Blog Critics Magazine, and I feel this is something I'll have to mention when I review it.

None of my other trials have done this, so I know it's not on my end. I was so ready to shell out the money, but this is leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

And there's no way to contact staff directly to resolve this before I go ahead with anything, is there?

[dosu66]

Since I first posted, the trial period dropped to 9 days. I truly hope someone can offer a solution.

[KingSparta]

When The Date Is Wrong Or Played With, Or The Computer Name Is Changed Things Like This Can Happen.

The Only Way I Know To Resolve This Is Format And Re-Install Windows (Not A Real solution I Know).

JRiver For Obvious Reasons Will Not Release Information Or Talk About Ways To Circumvent This Protection Scheme.

[JimH]

This is staff.

I don't know what caused the problem, but as KingSparta says, we don't discuss how the the trial period works.

Your problem is not a common one.  It could be as simple as having an incorrect date set on your PC.

[dosu66]

Absolutely nothing was changed on my computer. There's nothing wrong with the date, and nothing has been renamed. This didn't happen until the program automatically updated itself.

Care to explain what I did wrong, except let the program update itself?

And, no, re-installing Windows is no solution. In fact, it's a fairly absurd solution to what is obviously a bug in the program.

I don't like being treated like I'm trying to somehow circumvent a security measure, or whatever.  I'm not an idiot, I know I can just uninstall and then reinstall after every trial ends.  I genuinely like this program (less now), and was hoping for an honest, helpful solution.

[JimH]

I don't think anyone has suggested that you are an idiot.

I said I don't know what caused the problem.  What more can we do?

[Omni]

This thread and the responses confuse me.  No mention of a specific version was cited by the OP, but this thread was created on 9/2/2008, and he said he downloaded it "just yesterday," i.e., 9/1/2008.  A week earlier v.12.0.532 was released:

12.0.532 (8/25/2008)

1. Changed: Tuned Radio playback algorithm to be less likely to focus in on a certain artist or genre during playback with little user input via skips.
2. Fixed: The license needed dialog could report that a trial had expired when there was still a valid trial period.
3. Fixed: The trial period could affect MC13 use as well.

Seems to be that he's just reporting a known but apparently unfixed bug, yet you guys are trying to the point the blame back to him: it's his system date, etc.

I agree that's there's probably not much JRiver can do to rectify his dilemma save issuing him a full license or something, but at least you could acknowledge there was and still may be a problem instead always trying to pass the blame back to the end-user.

[Alex B]

The OP could have posted the exact version numbers so that the described process could have been reproduced on a vanilla Windows installation.

I'd like to think that a software reviewer would understand a bit better than an average user how these kind of things work and how possible bugs can be reported effectively.

Personally, I use the freeware Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 program for testing things like this. Whenever I want to reset everything I just restore its drive image file from my backup archive. I don't work for JRiver, but I could have quickly tested the described process on the Virtual PC. If I want to restore my real system I can restore my latest Acronics True Image backup set. I update my backup sets before installing any new major programs that need to be installed by running an install process.

If there is/was a bug it may well be fixed in the latest version, but possibly that does not help if the trial was started with an older version. (Naturally, I don't have any personal experience of this.)

Since the automatic update is not triggered very often (not for every released build) the situation is probably quite rare.

[JimH]

If I thought it was our problem, I would have said so.  I'm still not sure.  What he describes is not what I would have expected if the problem was the same one we fixed.

[Alex B]

It would be rather odd if the remaining amount of trial would change if the user (or automatic update) has not adjusted the computer date.

According to the reported incidents I have seen the trial expires completely if something triggers that.

In any case it would be good to be able to reproduce the exact procedure and check if there is a real problem.

[JimH]

At this point, I believe that this is a one-off problem.  We aren't going to pursue it.

The original poster hasn't been back since his last post.