I bought a license for Houdini Apprentice 9.0 in November 2007 and I would like to purchase an upgrade to Houdini Apprentice HD 9.5. From the Houdini 9.5 blurb:

“Artists who want the benefits of using Apprentice HD 9.5, can purchase it now from the Houdini Store and the 9.5 license will continue to work once Houdini 9.5 is released. Older Houdini Apprentice HD licenses purchased before May 12th can be upgraded through the Houdini Store for $69.”

I put in my licensing password and the price changes to $69 for an upgrade. I fill in all details and progress through to putting in my credit card info (which is correct and valid), but when I get to the end and click on purchase, I get:

Your order was not processed successfully.

Err: PSI-0403
ErrMsg: PSI-0403:Invalid Storekey.

Is anyone else having this problem? I live in South Africa, in case that makes a difference. Sometimes forms are set up only to accept US style post codes or states etc.

Please SESI, let me know how I can upgrade my Apprentice HD to 9.5.

Thanks

Sheena

Sheena,

Apologies for the delay in answering your question. With the weekend just behind us and Canada Day coming up tomorrow, our usually fast handling of licensing questions may require an extra cycle or two. Please bear with us as we try to solve your problem.

Please disregard this message if someone from SESI has already contacted you by email.

Regards,

Cristin Barghiel
R&D

Thanks, Cristin. There is no rush at all.

When I first joined here in November, I read somewhere that the upgrade discount for Apprentice HD would only be available for a limited time after a new Houdini version was brought out, and I didn't want to lose the discount.

I have a feeling that your purchase didn't go through because you tried to upgrade from 9.0 to 9.5 by skipping 9.1 entirely.

Anyway, I don't remember exactly how we defined the upgrade policy, and I don't want to make the wrong guess here – it would only confuse you and the others on this forum. I will let the right people at SESI reply to you with a concrete answer.

Please stay tuned.

Everyone who bought Houdini Apprentice HD 9.0 was entitled to a fre HD 9.1 upgrade. If you never received yours then we can correct that right away so that you can access H9.5. Please email me at rmagee@sidefx.com with the same email that you used to set up your HD license.

Robert

Hi Sheena,

From your description of the problem it appears as if there was a glitch with the Houdini Store at the time you tried to upgrade which should be fixed now.

If you wouldn't mind trying to upgrade via the store again, it should work this time.

Thanks,
Chris

Thanks for your replies.

Cristin and Robert, I checked my Houdini License Administrator just to make sure that I did upgrade from 9.0 to 9.1 - it says Houdini Apprentice-HD 9.1 plus 2 non-commercial 9.1 licenses (Render and Master), which looks OK to me.

Chris, I have just tried to upgrade again as follows:

- using my credit card and using my husband's (both have been used successfully for online purchases in the last two or three days)
- using my computer and using my husband's (we have different security software and setups on our computers, but both computers are behind the same router and firewall).
- I also tried putting in Alaska in the state / province field in case leaving it blank was causing a problem. (A blank state field or non-US postal code or telephone format have occasionally caused problems on other sites).
- I tried on Firefox, Opera and IE7 last time, in case the new security features in Firefox 3 & Opera 9.5 were causing problems.

Unfortunately, I still get the same PSI-0403 error mentioned in my first post.

Other thoughts:

I save all passwords and licenses to an encrypted AI Roboform database as soon as I create / get them, so I don't usually have password problems. Just to check though, I presume my password is correct as I upgraded from 9.0 to 9.1 successfully and your store web page updates to reflect a $69 price once I put in the password.

I shall be installing two new hard drives and doing a clean install of Windows XP today, so I shall try to upgrade once my computer is up again, in case something on my side is preventing the transfer of information from Sidefx to PSIgate.

Thanks once again for your help

Sheena

Success at last! I tried upgrading to 9.5 after I had done a clean install of my OS and the upgrade went through. Presumably the fault was on my side, but I'm not sure what, as too much has changed with the clean install to narrow it down to a single programme or add-on.

Thanks once again to Cristin, Robert and Chris for your help.