Unable to activate FilmPack 7 in PhotoLab 8: "An error occurred while writing activation data to disk." (Sequoia)

I have a support ticket open for this, but I figured I’d engage the community too, in case anyone has any ideas. (DXO support seems pretty slow to respond lately, to the point of fully ghosting me.)

When I put my FilmPack 7 license key in the FilmPack activation window in PhotoLab 8, I receive the message, “An error occurred while writing activation data to disk.”

PhotoLab is otherwise working normally, but I can’t access any of the FilmPack features (and I can’t even successfully run FilmPack as a standalone app, but that’s another kettle of fish. All of my problems started with Sequoia, and in the beginning I was patient, because I know it can be a process to make everything work in a new OS, but it’s not new anymore.

So far I’ve tried messing with the app permissions, as that’s been an issue for a lot of apps in Sequoia; I gave PhotoLab “full disk access,” which sounded promising, but no dice.

I am not a Mac user but a lot of these problems are simply permissions on the directory/file you are trying to access.

macOS Sequoia has an even tighter security setup than Sonoma.
Sequoia also has a lot more questions of the “allow thisorthat to access nadeena blabla?” kind. Pushing the wrong button will do the rest.

There are a few ways to reset security settings though:

  • on an item by item basis in System Settings’ Data Security section
  • or as tabula rasa by typing tccutil reset All in Terminal.app

Disclaimer: Be careful when using Terminal.app. Don’t use it if it would be your first trial now. Don’t use it unless you do have a backup that works.

3 Likes

Great tips! I’ll give it a whirl.

Thanks.

Support got back to me with a solution, and it worked!

I had to clear out a license file with this terminal command:

rm ~/Library/Application\ Support/DxO/Licenses/.~filmpack7.lock

Posting it here in case it helps someone else in the future.

Yikes, a hidden lock-file, thanks for the information.

For those who don’t feel comfortable with Terminal.app
Unhide (and hide) invisible files in Finder by pressing shift-command-period and go from there. Be careful when deleting hidden files!