iNav's use of Nalperion

I HATE it. This service absolutely stinks.

I had my two licenses on my carPC and my laptop. I use both a LOT- carpc while travelling around town and to/from work (200 + miles a day), and my laptop while I travel (Hertz's "NeverLost" just doesn't do it for me).

Two weeks ago the hard drive on my carpc crashed. Physically. I don't have $3k for recovery, and there's no guarantee I'd get the correct files for that license anyway. I can't find an actual PHONE NUMBER for anyone at either iNav OR their license manager (Nalperion) to save my life. So that license is gone, I guess.

Since I wasn't travelling much I manually moved the license from my laptop to my carpc's new drive (set, actually- RAID now) so I could use it. BTW if you don't use a ruggedized HDD in your carpc like Seagate's EE.25 series - they sell it at MP3car.com - you might want to think about it.


Yesterday I was flying out on business and decided to use the web de-activate/activate procedure to take the license off the carPC and put it back on my laptop. I didn't have my thumb drive handy, and was running late so I figured that'd be best and I could just activate when I got where I was going.

When I went through the activation process, the de-activate took the first time. I then went ahead and tried to open iGuidance on the car pc to make sure the license was not there, and sure enough, I got the activation screen as I should have. All well and good, I made the plane with about 2 minutes to spare.

When I got here, I tried to activate the laptop, and just... can't. First the software was telling me the license number was invalid. Then the website was telling me that the license number AND the installation ID (GENERATED INSIDE THEIR OWN SOFTWARE!) were no good. And now I just want to scream.

I was going to take a really nice drive today, and had planned on making the trip with the navigation. I really can't do large parts of the trip now due to time constraints, time I spent trying to get this stupid software to just work.

Sorry for the rant on my very first post- I actually bought iGuidance v4 back in June based on what I read at this site.

If anyone can help me out I'd appreciate it. I wanted to upgrade to 2009 version, but now I'm not so sure I want to. This has left an awefully sour taste in my mouth.

Oh, and I also suppose that this issue will also now not allow me to buy the "upgrade" version of 2009 instead of the full version.

Hi jrwank,

to Laptop GPS World.

I haven't yet heard any horror stories about the software activation in the new iGuidance 2009. I don't know if this is because iNav has changed something, or if it is simply because not too many people have the new 2009 version yet.

I was under the impression that even if you have to reformat your hard drive, and then re-install everything, the software activation should let you activate iGuidance, since it should recognize your old hardware. But don't take my word for it, because I never looked deep into this, since I never experienced any problems in this area.

I feel your pain, though. Nowadays vast majority of GPS navigation software products do use software activation schemes. This may actually be something that the map data provider requires them to do, but I'm not 100% sure about it.

The only suggestion I have is to try to e-mail to iNav, and politely explain what happened. They are the only ones that may assist you in this matter.

Okie dokie.
My biggest issue right now is that there is just NO phone number or direct email address to either of the two companies. I would just call in if I could- that would make things a lot easier. In the end, I think that's my major complaint through this whole ordeal- the customer service isn't there at all, or so it seems. Of course, when you're already red in the face sometimes it's hard to see what's right in front of you so I'm probably missing something.
I went down to the local BestBuy and just bought Streets and maps. At least that'll get me minimally through the trip, and 30 bucks isn't a whole lot of cash. I still want to upgrade through it all. iG is just more flexible b/c I can run it in Centrafuse without any hassle whatsoever via available plugins. Hopefully this'll all get sorted out.

I noticed that user "iNav" seems to be a contact from within the company- I also noticed that there's contact info in his/her profile, so I'll use that. Thanks for the tip.

You could try that, or, if you wish, phone, fax, and e-mail addresses are at iNav's website: http://www.inavcorp.com/company.php

Yeah... umm... hence the "red in the face" comment above. LOL. I spent over an hour trying to find that page. And it's right there, link on the top right from inav's main page.
Thanks.

To close this out, I got a call from a nice gal at iNav later in the afternoon and she set everything right.

I think one thing we talked about bears repeating here.

iNav's license is for ONE computer. What's supposed to happen is you're supposed to put the software on ONE computer, and the other "key" is supposed to be in reserve within their system for things like hard disk failure. That is the official line.

The unofficial line is they do know people put it on two computers, and that's ok, but in situations like this they don't HAVE to do anything if you do use both the keys.

The other thing she said was to never use the USB key method to transfer your license keys. For some reason it really screws with their system- I didn't really follow her reasons, but nevertheless it does. That is apparently what happened to me.

So, hats off to iNav. Thanks for setting it straight. I'm ready for 2009.....

jrwank, thanks for letting us know.

If you ever feel like it, you could post some pictures of your CarPC running your iGuidance 4 or iGuidance 2009 to our photo albums.

Solid State Drives are the way for you to go.

Let me know if you need some ideas as to what to get.