I recently installed GC2UE in Windows 8.1 and when starting the game from the launcher, I get a registration window that doesn't work (a classic Stardock application issue). The issue seems to be that the activator can't get access to the "C:\ProgramData\Stardock Games" folder to write the .bin file for the serial number, even when using "run as administrator".
Here's the method I had to use to get the GC2UE activation to work for me in Windows 8.1 (64-bit):
- download the zip file containing the legacy activation files. extract the file, copy all of the files from the extracted location into "C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock Games\Galactic Civilizations II - Ultimate Edition" folder, overwriting any existing ones.
- Right-click and edit the "register_gc2ultimate.cmd" file. Select the entire command that's there and copy to clipboard.
- Open a Windows command prompt (must be run as administrator). enter the command "cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock Games\Galactic Civilizations II - Ultimate Edition" to move to the folder where the activation .exe files are.
- Right-click in the command line window and select paste. it should paste the command you copied from the .cmd file into the next line. Hit Enter and you should get an activation window that looks different than the one you saw earlier, when first starting the game. this activation window only asks for email and serial number. enter that information and click the activate button and this time, it should work correctly. Now when you start the game from the launcher, it should launch the game directly without prompting for activation.
I also changed the compatibility mode for "ReactorActivate.exe" and "SDActivate.exe" to force them to run as administrator before I did this. I'm not sure if that makes a difference or not.
I anticipate having this problem when I go to install SOSE as well.
STARDOCK: You need to fix this. It's absurd that a year after Windows 8 came out, this runaround is what needs to happen to make these games work correctly. It can't take more than a few hours for someone to come up with a permanent fix for this that can be released as a hotfix for these games.
