error "We couldn’t verify your activation info. Please contact Skylum Support." over the splash screen.

Among the things I have fruitlessly tried is resetting the hosts file, temporarily disabling the firewall, the ridiculous winmgmt/wbem solution, changing my password (whatever good that is supposed to do) and more. I refuse to use "CCleaner" which has also been recommended.

Researching this problem for hours, I have found 2-year-old posts from hordes of frustrated users facing the same issue without any resolution, mentioning that even support could not help them.

I despise software with so-called "protection" that makes it harder and more cumbersome for legitimate users to use it than for pirates who would presumably just strip out the activation stuff...

So can you please provide the software without this horrible non-working activation stuff or provide a simple, working solution for this issue (and add this to your website)?

Otherwise I'm afraid it'll have to be a refund and zero tacos from me. This took more than two hours of my life that I'll never get back...