Can't access books from an old comp?

[Cherryman99]

I loaded ade but didn't authorize it and then bought 4 books for it. The motherboard on that comp died but I had a backup of the hard drive so I loaded ade2.0 to the older comp and authorized it and moved the 4 books to it. Now when I click on a book it gives me an error message that the book belongs to another comp and will not open to read it. Is there any way I can get these so I can read them? Thanks.

[sjpt]

Unfortunately, I don't think there is.

You can move books between different devices registered with the same ID, but not between different IDs.

Allowing you to run without an explicit Adobe ID is a vicious trap that Adobe lays for unsuspecting customers.

When you register 'without ID', ADE creates an anonymous/implicit ID with limited powers (eg can't be used to share with other devices).

Whenever you first load a DRM book, that copy of the book is associated with whatever ID the computer is registered to at the time.

Any book you load while this anonymous ID is active gets associated with that ID, and can't be read on any other device.

When you properly register your computer with a real ID, that old anonymous ID is lost.

Now you don't have any devices that can read the book.

ADE does warn you about running without explicit Adobe ID, but not in nearly strong enough language.

You can try contacting the original book suppliers, and they may be kind enough to let you have a second copy.

From what I have read, it is much more common for them not to help in this way;

and to be fair it would be a little like asking a bookseller for a second copy because your first had died in a fire.

~~~

For others that have found themselves in this trap, all is not lost while you still have ADE running with the anonymous ID.

Sadly, I don't think this will help Cherryman99, but posted in case it helps some other reader of the post.

The only way I know round this is to use a DRM stripper such as epubee BEFORE you deauthorize the device.

I do NOT advocate using such code to get around the valid limitations placed on a DRM book.

However, where the problem arises only because of the ineptness of Adobe's ADEPT DRM infrastructure and its implementation,

such a measure is totally justifiable.