24 replies to this topic

[Riko]

Just got Quake 4. Banged up in its box.
Boxart DOA (dead on arrival).

Anyway, installed the game and now my 5 thingiecode: '1111- 2222-3333-4444-5555' (fake just for example)
CD key which is not on the ???Cd or the CD case but on the damaged
box doesn't work, as far as I can see. Its even a 4 thingie you have to
fill in as CD key.

Anyone any ideas?     

[steiner designer]

Riko, on April 11th 2006, 10:48 AM, said:

Just got Quake 4. Banged up in its box.
Boxart DOA (dead on arrival).

Anyway, installed the game and now my 5 thingiecode: '1111- 2222-3333-4444-5555' (fake just for example)
CD key which is not on the ???Cd or the CD case but on the damaged
box doesn't work, as far as I can see. Its even a 4 thingie you have to
fill in as CD key.

Anyone any ideas?     

When I bought SW Battlefront, the CD Key was missing the last 3 or 4 digits (I think this was a problem with a whole batch that shipped this way).

Anyway, I contact Aspyr tech support, and they sent the full key to me.

http://support.aspyr.com/

[Lord Brixton]

I needed 3 attempts to input my code:

1st try I included the dashes (wrong)

2nd try I assume I mis-typed something

3rd one's a charm: All uppercase, no dashes or punctuation.

Still bad?

[jgwdoc]

Riko, on April 11th 2006, 10:48 AM, said:

Just got Quake 4. Banged up in its box.
Boxart DOA (dead on arrival).

Anyway, installed the game and now my 5 thingiecode: '1111- 2222-3333-4444-5555' (fake just for example)
CD key which is not on the ???Cd or the CD case but on the damaged
box doesn't work, as far as I can see. Its even a 4 thingie you have to
fill in as CD key.

Anyone any ideas?     

I had the same problem. Just get rid of the dashes and it works fine.

[NeverFade]

My Doom 3 copy came without a CD key enitrely.  

I exchanged it for one that did!

[MacManX]

Riko, on April 12th 2006, 05:48 AM, said:

Just got Quake 4. Banged up in its box.
Boxart DOA (dead on arrival).

Same here. I have a very flat Quake 4 box, although the CD key is readable. As for the key being on the box itself... words escape me. Anyone could head into a retail shop (if you can actually find a place that sells Mac games) and copy down the keys when nobody's looking

[bobbob]

MacManX, on April 11th 2006, 10:48 PM, said:

Anyone could head into a retail shop (if you can actually find a place that sells Mac games) and copy down the keys when nobody's looking

Hah, like that makes a difference. I knew a guy that was 350 lbs and looked like an angry buffalo. He'd just walk into Costco and start opening boxes like it was nobody's business.

[teflon]

i wonder if theres any need to go and copy them?? theres quite a few mac games where you can just use a PC CD key and itll work fine... and i think the Id games do this  a bit... not sure.

[Lord Brixton]

Riko, on April 11th 2006, 06:48 PM, said:

Its even a 4 thingie you have to
fill in as CD key.

In fact, on re-reading that, it does sound as if you're making the same mistake I did - The dashes are taking up the space you need fot the last 4 characters. Lose the hyphens & I wager that you'll be fine.

[the Battle Cat]

There are no dashes in Strogg Alphanumerics.  The Nexus chokes on them.

[Books]

I work at a Mac store...and noticed the Serial on the outside of the box. What's up with that? Does the key work fine?

[strangemax]

Just got my copy. I installed it on my laptop first, since my intel iMac was busy. Played a bit, then when my iMac was free tried running it there. NO CAN DO! It will not accept my cd key, saying it's in use. The game checks some kind of master server to see if that key has been used on another computer.  I can of course unplug from the network and play single player on my iMac, but multiplayer is forever only for my laptop.

[Tesseract]

Well that's rather dodgy, if the game is in fact forever locked to one computer. What are you supposed to do if you upgrade?

[steiner designer]

strangemax, on April 13th 2006, 01:28 PM, said:

The game checks some kind of master server to see if that key has been used on another computer.

I wonder if you can "de-authorize" the CD Key from the first computer. (Kind of like how you can move AAC encoded music files from an old Mac to a new one).

It seems like there ought to be a way to do it. You may want to consider giving Aspyr tech support a try:

http://support.aspyr.com/

good luck, anyway.

[Quicksilver]

strangemax, on April 13th 2006, 03:28 PM, said:

Just got my copy. I installed it on my laptop first, since my intel iMac was busy. Played a bit, then when my iMac was free tried running it there. NO CAN DO! It will not accept my cd key, saying it's in use. The game checks some kind of master server to see if that key has been used on another computer.  I can of course unplug from the network and play single player on my iMac, but multiplayer is forever only for my laptop.

If you bought your copy from the store, then it's probable that someone walked through and copied your serial number down and is currently using it with a pirated copy of Quake 4.  I definitely recommend contacting Aspyr.

[a2daj]

In that case, why would it work on his laptop and not his iMac?

According to Activision's site:

"Quake 4 only allows one computer to use a CD key at any given time, regardless of whether you are playing Single or Multiplayer."

This doesn't completely answer the question, but it seems likely that strangemax's hypothesis may be correct, which would be unfortunate.

edit:  I was doing some research and it seems there's an issue with Quake 4 and CD keys where folks have to re-enter their keys after getting disconnected from net games or wait 5 minutes.  I'd have to see a bigger sample set of folks having problems and their solutions to know what works since I don't have the game to test things out myself.

[strangemax]

a2daj, on April 15th 2006, 04:39 PM, said:

In that case, why would it work on his laptop and not his iMac?

According to Activision's site:

"Quake 4 only allows one computer to use a CD key at any given time, regardless of whether you are playing Single or Multiplayer."

This doesn't completely answer the question, but it seems likely that strangemax's hypothesis may be correct, which would be unfortunate.

edit:  I was doing some research and it seems there's an issue with Quake 4 and CD keys where folks have to re-enter their keys after getting disconnected from net games or wait 5 minutes.  I'd have to see a bigger sample set of folks having problems and their solutions to know what works since I don't have the game to test things out myself.

I found that post on Activision's site as well, but I thought I'd give it a shot on a powermac G5 I have at home. It installed fine and took the CD key. I dared not try multiplayer for fear it would no longer accept my CD key and I wanted to play single player. I will try multiplayer on the G5 tonight and see what happens.

[BAW]

I ordered my copy from macgamestore.com. Was your CDKEYs attached to the plastic wrapping like mine?



Also, the CD holder is broken in the middle. The box doesn't have any evidence of being crushed though. Poor packaging in my opinion.

[Lord Brixton]

I got mine from MGS too. Squashed flat on arrival - which I ascribed to the 3000-odd mile journey across teh Atlantic.

As I have a shiny new laptop to check out as well I installed the game on 2 Macs within a few hours of each other. No issues at all.

I haven't tried multiplayer yet though, as there weren't any servers the one time I checked.

That wasn't much help, was it?



The only thing I have to add is that the game requires the DVD to be in the drive as well as the correct serial being entered, and it seems to be wise to the old 'don't want to scratch my disk so i'll mount a .dmg' caper.

I haven't tried really hard yet, but it looks like it would be non-trivial to duplicate the disk - meaning that a copied serial might not be too much use in itself.

[Tomatocow]

No. It was not
Although I haven't tried installing Q4 on anything other than my MBP...