hello

I'm not sure because all times when i have a problem with my computer i ask Cycling to send me new challenge, i think is not very simple. I have not ilok for the moment because i think flash memory is not very secure and if ilok have problem with database containing your licence, how to recover this problem. I hate the system of licence. But to send you response, I think this

1) create Ilok account on www.ilok.com, 2) buy Ilok 3) to autorise max with ilok key send message to cycling support they send licence to ilok 4) after when you log in ilok .com and plug your ilok you can synchronise the ilok and take the licence on your ilok key 5) after if you loose ilok key Cycling decline responsability and you loose licencing, you must buy the product.

i don't have ilok but it probably is the same... simply install over the old one(no need to uninstall). let the installer autoselect(unless you notice it's doing something crazy like trying to install to your connected ipod... not likely ;) your preferences, file-preferences, 3rdparty externals, etc. will all be there as they were when it's done(only updates the stuff that needs updating). i've also heard that max5/patches is a good place to store any patches, tuts, you'd like to keep around...

however, you should still make a backup of anything you need which is external to max, just in case... the installer on one version might accidentally not work the same(or maybe it needs to wipe your prefs or externals at some point to fix some deep rooted bug... again, highly unlikely ;) or you might just have a harddrive crash.... in any case, you know the old addage: "to err is human, to really f-ck things up takes a goddamned computer!"

so back it all up and then don't worry, it'll all be as you like it with the install of the update, anyways.

Thanks guys just needed reassurance on what the installer actually does when updating; i think i shall back up all my 3rd party stuff, then do an auto-install.

ps, occasionally, opening an object helpfile slows everything down ("Max is not responding"), and then it wakes up again, is this something to do with the Max preferences file that lives in the app folder somewhere??

i doubt it has to do with preferences file..., but since i've never run into that problem, can't say for sure.

so i bump to help for an answer. (you may want to put more detail about when this started happening(and possibly any specific object you run into this problem with), since you ask within context of this thread, it makes me think maybe it started happening after you updated?)

I have that with the help files too, sometimes, but only the first one is slow to open, then it's fine. Don't think trashing the Preferences will help with this, not sure.

Thanks for bump noob4life; I haven't updated yet (I put it here cos i'm hoping that updating will solve this minor issue), but I will do today and then wait to see if the problem persists, and question support if it does

Cheers Brendan

one more thing.... today, for the first time in awhile, Max was extremely slow in responding(nothing to do with help files, just in general... and i had just updated yesterday morning)... i decided to open up 'Activity Monitor' to see what was going on. I found one thread labelled, "UserEvenAgent" and it was highlighted in red with a "NotResponding" tag next to it. I selected that "UserEventAgent" then hit "QuitProcess"(all within 'Activity Monitor') and Max sped right up again. No probs anymore so far(without even having to restart my comp, which i will probably do eventually, anyways). I don't know if that will solve your help file prob but it might be a good thing to try... if you're on a Mac, anyways... not sure what the equivalent would be on Windows... best of luck!

spooky - similar thing happened this morning for me, while copying a forum patch (New From Clipboard), Max just sort of, stalled and then resumed. The equivalent to Activity Monitor (I guess) on PC would be either Task Manager or Services Monitor. It's been that long since I had a Services spring-clean, better do one. And then update Max.

Brendan