Steam Purchase - Unable to Activate game... now being blocked reached max activations

[sidia]

To whom it may concern...

I purchased X3 via steam, and attempted to activate it online... this was not successful and it re-directed me to a htm file. I ran the html file but nothing happend... seems like i tried this method 5 times without me getting a response... causing my game to be un-activatable?

[eladan]

Clearly, whatever the initial problem was will need to be fixed before your activations are reset - TAGES would be the people to contact for issues related to activation. I believe they are also able to reset your activations, otherwise ES can do that when the issue is resolved.

[aka1nas]

I had this issue recently when I attempted to reinstall TC, and after working with Sascha a bit it turned out that I was not actually out of activations.

Something must have changed with the TAGES software recently, as it now seems to need to run with Administrator privileges during activation or it will generate erroneous messages that you have hit your activation limit. Unfortunately, it also does not generate a UAC prompt (I'm on Vista) by itself.

What ended up fixing it was setting x3tc.exe (not the TAGES exe) to Run As Administrator.

[frymaster]

huh, when I installed, I got a UAC escalation prompt the first time I ran the game, for activation. Like you say, something must have changed.

Might be worth dropping valve a line and telling them about this