Unfortunately I can see I am not alone on the bad installation and MPEG2 activation. Tech support made me feel like I was the only one.

I have been following the tech support instructions for six weeks. I am getting closer, probably two weeks out. (Ha)

Don't you hate software that does not work. And support who makes you jump thru hoops for nothing. (Ha)

The patch that became available recently got me past the Bad Installation. I am now at the invalid product key. The tech I am diligently following directions with for the last six weeks seems to omit pieces of what to do.

I found the John at Roxio manual activation and thought I might have something but my product key fails to display. He had the pieces missing in his fix at least.

Someone else noted they had success with the full uninstall reinstall. I am going to try that again. They had mentioned it took them a few tries.

Man I just love spending my time on Roxio products.

I fixed the Invalid key problem I had by running this program.
http://patches.sonic.com/techsupport/emc9rmv.zip

I have no idea if i am editing someone elses comments but I tried bob's link only to find it blockked as a trojen startpage by bitdefender so I tunded off the antivirus to run it and now I get a message that my 'trial bversion' of roxio has expired - thanks bob. If roxio would take better care and responsability we would noyt have this type of misinformation. So much for Roxio having its actr together. My eppisodes today - 4 hours!!! - Still not operative!!!!

The 'trial version' problem is a well known one. It's down to Norton One Button Checkup and it's McAfee equivalent. They delete a registry key that causes that to happen.

Search the boards for OBC or One Button Checkup and you'll see what I mean

I tried downloading the patch but I get an empty file. Tried at least 8 times.

The problem with the patch is that all anti-spyware and anti-virus apps flag it as a 'generic Trojan'

To put it simply, a 'Trojan' makes changes to the registry so they will block it. Unfortunately, in this case, the file is intended to change a registry setting (to repair the problem) but the defenders don't KNOW that, so they block it

You'll have to turn Defender off for the download and turn it back on right afterwards