"There was a problem activating your software..."

When logging onto ESC you might receive an activation error similar to this:

There was a problem activating your software: Could not access the server to activate. Details: The request failed with HTTP status 417: Expectation failed.

This article will show you how to troubleshoot this issue if you encounter it.

Details:

Activation errors usually mean you are either not licensed to use the version of the software that you have installed or ESC is unable to communicate with our licensing servers. If you are currently on a support plan with us, please complete the following steps to troubleshoot this issue.

1. If you are on the computer having the problem, click this link: https://escwebservices.descosoftware.com. If you are not, open a browser, such as Internet Explorer, and enter it in manually. You should receive the following message in your browser when you do this: 403 - Forbidden: Access is denied.
2. If you get a different error there is a good chance that a firewall is blocking you from communicating with our licensing servers. To fix this you will need to make sure port 443 is not blocked by a firewall. This exception should be made on each computer running ESC. Repeat step 1 after you do this. If you get the correct error message, try logging into ESC again.
3. If you still cannot activate the software after port 443 has been opened, make sure you are logged in as the computer administrator. ESC attempts to write the activation key to the registry in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ESC\Activate. Logging in using that account will typically give you full access to the registry but if you have special security in place, you may need to allow the user to access that. Contact your network administrator if you suspect that to be the case. As a general rule, if you don't have a network administrator, or you are the network administrator, and you don't know what this means - you don't have special security setup. Please move to the next step instead.
4. Make sure you are not using a proxy server to connect to the Internet. You can generally check this by opening Internet Explorer and selecting Tools → Internet Options → Connections → LAN Settings.
5. Call us at 800-226-7529. We will check to make sure your account in configured correctly on our Admin Control Panel. If it is, we will also send you a new license key. This should generally not be necessary but in the past some older licenses may not have written your ESC customer number into your license correctly, so it is worth checking.

If you are not on a support plan and are not sure you are entitled to the version of the software you have installed, please call us at 800-226-7529. We will be happy to check your licensing and see what version of ESC you should be running.