Firewall preventing FusionPro from activating

When our new firewall was installed, I began getting error messages that "ProdActivate" would unexpectedly quit whenever I would launch Acrobat 7 with FusionPro 4.2 on my Mac OS 10.4. They were able to reconfigure the firewall to avoid this, but someone was able to exploit that and relay spam through our mail server. When they tightened security on the firewall, I began getting the errors again. Yesterday, they were able to reconfigure again allowing me to launch the application without error, but every time I would make a change which caused the preview to update, I would get the error again. Today, I can't even launch the application without getting the error.

Does anyone know how to configure a firewall to let these excessive activations through? Better yet, does anyone know how to permanently activate the application behind a firewall?

I can tell you that one thing which will definitely prevent the problem is to disconnect your machine from the Internet.

I can also tell you with a fair degree of confidence that standard corporate firewall settings do not affect FusionPro, as we would be hearing about it from many more customers otherwise.

Beyond that, I'll have to ask that you please address all registration-related issues directly to Support.

I find it amusing that you would imply that an application which has been installed, registered, and running for two years could have "registration-related" issues. What's not so amusing is that it appears to be exactly that. Why would an application require re-registering 50-75 times a day which is about how often I get the message that ProdActivate has unexpectedly quit.

For the record, support was contacted on both occasions and were very helpful right up to the point where we concluded that the firewall was responsible. At that point, the problem was all mine. So I'll use whatever other means is available.

I find it amusing that you would imply that an application which has been installed, registered, and running for two years could have "registration-related" issues.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply anything beyond what you've already stated. I apologize for the trouble you're having.

What's not so amusing is that it appears to be exactly that. Why would an application require re-registering 50-75 times a day which is about how often I get the message that ProdActivate has unexpectedly quit.

It's not technically trying to re-register or re-activate every time, which is why disconnecting the machine from the Internet will work around the problem. You can always register manually by going to this site:

http://register.printable.com/fusionpro/

And then you should be able to use the product on your machine even if it can't access the Internet.

That said, I'm sure you can understand that I don't want to get any further into the implementation details of the registration and activation process in a public forum.

For the record, support was contacted on both occasions and were very helpful right up to the point where we concluded that the firewall was responsible. At that point, the problem was all mine. So I'll use whatever other means is available.

I'm sorry that the problem has not been resolved yet. However, it's clear that the settings on your firewall are at least a contributing factor. We do have many other customers who are using FP Desktop behind firewalls without this problem. It's also clear that FusionPro shouldn't be responding to whatever conditions the firewall is creating by having ProdActivate crash. That's something I definitely want to fix.

But a full analysis of the problem would require more specific information from you, including specific information about your firewall settings, and I'm not sure you'd be any more comfortable discussing those details publicly than we are about discussing the low-level details of our registration process publicly. At any rate, I'm not sure how anyone but Support is going to be able to help you, in the context of this forum or elsewhere.

I'll ask Support to route your specific question to me privately, because I do want to get to the bottom of this crash.