LabVIEW 2020 SP1 Community Mac edition Activation

[billko]

---

@antony.g wrote:

I was having the same problem with activation, but also seemed to have trouble just logging into my NI account. I used the "forgotten password" link and changed my password, but still no luck.

I was using Safari so I thought I would try Chrome, but exactly the same thing. I then tried Firefox and surprisingly it let me log in instantly without problem, but I still couldn't activate LabVIEW.

This was using my personal NI account, I also had another account I set up years ago under my business email address. I tried using this account and success!!!! LabVIEW is now activated.

Not sure what fixed it in the end, either the browser or a different account. I had previously installed the Beta of the Community Edition but removed it, not sure if this was causing problems,

---

I've found that having the beta activated at some point does make it a rocky road to activating the released version.

[kittentronic]

I'm having the same problem trying to activate the Mac version…

I have also had a beta activation in the past - is there anything I can do about this from my end?

[billko]

NI Engineers don't officially patrol this forum, although many of them drop by to see if they can help anyway.  I've found that Mackenzie8907 has helped me in the past with LV CE activation issues, but I fear I've called forth the genie too often, and you should probably send her a private message with a link to your topic so she can know that there is someone in need of assistance.

Unfortunately, LV CE users have no official support.

[kittentronic]

It's not quite as bad as that - there may be no entitlement to technical support for CE, but I 'reached out' (argh) to NI on Twitter and they advised me to open a support ticket, which I did by selecting the 'Activate' button, proceeding without a serial number and choosing 'LabVIEW Professional' as the product. I got a response in a few hours pointing me at this Knowledgebase page which says in summary:

• you need to log in and download the Community Edition installer with the same ni.com account that you then use to activate it,
• you must remove any evaluation copies of NI software from your computer first, but
• if you were in the Community Edition beta programme and still see that listed in 'My Products' on the site, then you need to create a new account with a different email address.

I'm not especially impressed with that as a way to reward beta programme participants, but I did create a new account and have now got it working. (I deleted all NI and LabVIEW related files from my /Library/Application Support, /Library/Preferences and ~/Library/Preferences folders as well as the app folder from /Applications before reinstalling, just in case that made any difference.)

[TGL1983]

Same problem here in Ubuntu

[RavensFan]

MAC or Ubuntu, those in themselves could cause peculiar things to happen.

Here are a few threads I've seen where people finally had success.  See if any help you.

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Labview-Community-2020-Edition-Activation/m-p/4128198#M1188961

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/LabVIEW-community-edition-won-t-activate/m-p/4128136#M1188940

https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA03q000000ww6wCAA&l=en-US

Some responses today show that the IPv6 only setting on a PC seems to be causing problems with activation, and people are disabling that and returning to IPv4 and having success.  Perhaps that is happening here too.

[kissoflove]

Make Google Chrome default

[kittentronic · Accepted solution]

I just fired up my Community Edition for the first time in a while, got the non-working activation popup as described in the OP, forgot how I'd fixed this before, searched here and found my own answer 😀

This time I fixed it by:

• logging in here (i.e. the NI website)
• clicking on my account icon (top right) and selecting Products
•  clicking the 'Select Action' dropdown opposite LabVIEW Community Edition, MacOS, Subscription License and choosing Renew
• launching LabVIEW Community Edition again and clicking the button to activate, which then worked. 

I didn't have to delete or reinstall any files or change my web browser from Safari.