Waves licenses - Anyone got a way around

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Well I built a new computer over xmas, had a few issues, installed windows a few times, RMA some hardware etc. After installing plugins for what feels like the last 50 years, I run waves central again, and licenses are all over the place. I done a recovery at some point as I no longer have access to my old pc (parts were re-used) but things went wrong after that also.

Now most of my licenses are on some version of this pc build and my old computer and waves tech support are more about you can only recover your licenses once a year (bit more actually, said 03/2027 lol). And was trying to feed me crap about MAC ID and not using Hardware ID.

Last email I got from them was, let me know if you want me to forward this request on to someone else...

Na it's ok, I love to loose plugins!

So I doubt waves will help with this, anyone got a work around for this license BS with waves central?

or is it just uninstall and never buy, install or recommend anything from waves again?

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Waves in general - make good plugins, The authorising system is more than likely the worst of all that I use either in the cloud or on a machine. I have 3 machines with a few Waves plugins on each, all differing OS, problem number 1, all 3 need differing installs.

My suggestion is as follows,Tell them the machine with the most and or useful plugins for you won't boot, this sh*t happens in real life, They can move the licenses into the cloud for you, because you can no longer do it. This worked for me for real, not waves but iLok.

best of luck, moving the authorisations to the cloud before destroying your machine would have been more practical

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macmoffatt wrote: Wed Jan 28, 2026 2:14 pm This worked for me for real, not waves but iLok.
Now if they can use iLOK I would be happy.

But I've explained all this to waves in my original ticket, then re-explained it to them in email and then it ended up on asking do you want me to forward the request on to someone who may be able to help...

72 hours response wait time, I should get access again by mid summer...

RE: Good plugins
Erm, most no, which is my opinion but there are 3 or 4 I do like.

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Yes they suck, same thing happened to me when I logged my pc out of my Microsoft account.

They didn’t know why and basically did nothing to help. I never bothered to recover them, I didn’t have too many tho.

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MegaPixel wrote: Wed Jan 28, 2026 1:58 pm anyone got a work around for this license BS with waves central?

Absolutely - first of all, you can simply request a reset once a year (or so) - this is an immediate change that requires no (manual) action from them. You can do that within Waves Central at the push of a button.

Then: the name the computer is given in Waves Central (a string of letters and numbers) is this machine's - or to be exact (one of) its network adapter's - MAC-address..
On most computers (some laptops aside) this can be freely changed/set. ;-)

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