The problem isn’t in the installation file itself, but with their licensing server.
You should receive a pop up, or if you close and open the software later and they fixed their server for your license, you will be “promote” back up to Elite from now Essential.
It is important now that you don’t touch your photos, any one you select and try to edit, will have its post-processing setting not available to Essential version ripped, such as you will see denoise going back to “high”.
Aren’t users are beta testers now ?
On Macs, you don’t need to keep the previous installation file.
Before upgrading, quit PL and do the following…
The two versions will even run side by side if absolutely necessary, but not at the same time.
PhotoLab users who are beta testers normally test the next annual release, not point updates to the most current version.
Mark
I’m another unhappy customer.
As reported by the original poster, after the update from PL 7.6 (Elite) to PL 7.7, none of the PRIME noise reduction features worked. I couldn’t investigate straight away, so I quit PL 7.7 and went off to do what I had to do.
A couple of hours later I tried PL 7.7 again, it told me my license had been updated and the PRIME features all worked again BUT FilmPack and ViewPoint had been deactivated so I had to re-enter their activation codes.
This sort of slip-shod release should not happen.
Sorry, I have to correct myself. The D500 files are NEF, I took a few photos with my old Pentax K3 during the critical shoot, which is set to DNG. Nevertheless, Photolab used to open both file types without any issues and, as the thread shows very clearly, my issues have nothing to do with the type of RAW files I was using. Apologies for any confusion created!
no confusion/ I know that. 
was just trying to give you a hint.
Good to know – I’ll wait a couple of days until I hear better news.
Hello,
Following the problem you encountered with update 7.7, please close DxO PhotoLab and simply relaunch it. Once restarted, the problem encountered should be gone. We excuse for the inconvenience in the past hours.
(deleted by author)
That’s exactly what I did after I encountered the problems. Restartet PL7 – nothing changed. 
I will wait until you resolve this problem with a proper update. And, btw, I do not like the way you are handling this issue. How many of your users should run into these issues before you stop distributing such a non-working update? How many work hours should your customers spend to find a solution on their own? Just my opinion.
Use TimeMachine on the program file. Works perfectly.
Maybe problem was on their licence serveur which only delivered essential but not elite unlocks.
Anyway, since V7 DxO has huge betatests and tests problems …
Hello @ Rosember
If you still observe an issue, there might be another reason. Please open a support ticket at https://support.dxo.com/hc/en-us/requests/new to have it analysed
Has this all been fixed yet? I haven’t upgraded from 7.6 to 7.7 yet because of this problem. Would appreciate knowing when ti will be safe to upgrade to latest version.
The screw up with the license has been fixed. Well sort of, you may still need some manual intervention, see my post here:
Thank you - did the update - everything looks ok
Rather than start a new topic I’m just adding my experience of updating to PL7.7 from 7.6 and their licences to this topic.
I downloaded and installed PL7.7.
All features of PL7 / FP7 / VP4 now seem to be operating as expected.
So far the same as you described in detail.