Says I've DL'd too much

Why didn't you register by normal means instead of some dodgy account from somewhere else?
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So people just don't get it!!    This is a prime example of no parental control!  

I *did* register by normal means. For many sites, you need to register to get things, it takes forever, I just want to come in, get what I need, get out. I don't want to sign over my email address to every news site that has a story I want to read, so Bugmenot.com is a useful tool in that regard.

So, in conclusion, does anyone know how I can get around this? I'm not looking for a morality lesson here, I need technical help for a technical problem.

The way to 'get around it' is to register with a legitimate address and download to the limitations of the site.  If you wish to download further then contributing to the site by way of a subscription is 'the go'.

That is not a morality lesson...it's actually the 'technical solution' to your 'technical problem'...

Member Since Mar 29, 2005




If I were to guess that the account you are using right now is another pseudo account , I would be correct would'nt I?

I can't comment on other sites but it took me about a minute to register here.
Why don't you want to use your own details?
This is a totally trustworthy site and there really is no need for the cloak and dagger stuff.  

Okay, maybe I have not been clear enough. I have registered *using my own details, my own email address, my own name.* I have not used another account that isn't my own, I'm doing this completely legitimately and the problem persists.

This is the reason I have written this topic, to see what is going on here; I'm not expecting a public account to work 100% of the time, but I would expect that if I took the time to register my own account using my own details then it would work.

No, you wouldn't. When I say "I'll register a new account" I do not mean "I'll try a different account", I mean "I'll register a *new* account". Hopefully that is more clear.

SilentDragoon the following are your words.

Original post


Reply #3


So, what is it the you really want to do? Just trying to help.

Here's something, SysMetrix is not a Stardock program. Like Rainlendar and some others there are libraries here for their skins. Try searching the web and see if you might find what you are looking at another site.

This is a nice community here and we welcome everyone. You can find trial versions of Stardock programs at Stardock.com. They are just that, trial versions with a time limit.

It's a shame you don't like to register with the sites you want things from, it's the first step in getting support.   

That remains as your solution. Subscription is the way to go.

Reply #3 is in regard to my attitude for the sites in which I use BugMeNot; most prominently news sites.

To explain what I meant in the OP, it might be helpful to see my train of thought:

"Okay, good, this looks nice. It'll match my WinAmp skin... I should download it. Registration? Uh, damn. Okay, I'll hit up bugmenot and get something there..."

Five seconds later, public login details in hand, I log in.

"Okay, great, now, back to the download page... What? 50 megabytes downloaded? Uh, this must have been used by tons of people. Okay, fine, I'll register my own account. Whatever, I guess I'll be able to upload screenshots of my desktops and all that jazz. Hmmm, cool, okay, yeah, I'll do it."

So I go through the log in process: not too long, admittedly, but still quite a bit longer than bugmenot. I register my email address, pick a username, pick a password. I get the message that I should check my email to activate. I check my email, wait around a while, a few minutes later it shows up, I click the link, all is well.

I'm happy. I think of the things I'm gonna do with the account; thank people who have done themes I enjoy, upload my desktop once I've gotten that skin, look around for more stuff.

But unfortunately, all that I got to do was have the problem described above, descend to the forums and talk to hurtful people. Yay...

In regards to Philly's suggestion:

I have searched the web for this particular skin, and have not been able to find it on another site. I have looked for about twenty minutes, so I am fairly sure it has only been posted on this one site.

In regards to Hankers' suggestion:

It is not convenient for me to pay money to anything other than a brick-and-mortar store.

Also, I would not consider subscribing to a site that hasn't been providing me with a good or service I desire that I couldn't get for free. Would you pay Google for the privilege of using their search engine? Would you pay Yahoo! for the privilege of using their email? If a site has been uniquely useful to me, then I would be much more inclined to pay for it; Wikipedia for example has always been my charity of choice.

SilentDragon,

Just registering a new account doesn't automatically guarantee you will have a fresh limit to start with.  If that was the case it's possibly people would just continually create new accounts to bypass the system.

I'm glad you like the site and community, so my best suggestion is to purchase a subscription to WinCustomize, or consider becoming a customer of applications like WindowBlinds.

You can find more information about access levels here.

https://www.wincustomize.com/subscribers.aspx?info

SilentDragoon I'm not sure that I saw any hurtful people relying, but then we are all entitled to our own opinions.

What you are experiencing with the 50mb download and 60 day time limit with trail versions of programs here is what everyone is faced with. Within those limits you should be able to determine if you want to subscribe. I realize that not everyone can subscribe due to lack of funds or they just wish to get stuff for free. It's your choice.  

What program did you register?

SilentDragoon, you have a valid Stardock account, all looks good. You need to subscribe to WinCustomize in order to download the fruits of our fantastic array of community artists.

https://www.stardock.com/products/wincustomize/

I am assuming the site made record of your IP and in the original 'register' and your *new* account is still on the same IP (I don't personally know the details of how that works). I guess thats the price to pay for not registering with your own information to start with.

WC is a good site and the more you use it the more your going to want it and all its features. Subscribing to WC is worth the money.

I would characterise that as 'hurtful'.


Anyway;

on the site it says:



I belong in this category. I am talking on message boards. On a different computer, a year ago, in a different contintent, I did download a few things, as a guest. Maybe a few megabytes. However, I have downloaded nothing on this account, and nothing at all for the last year. It states in the above that I should have 500 megabytes of download bandwidth. What happened?

I don't mean to be insulting. I am just getting frustrated that what should, to me, be an easy solution (change some account settings? use a different computer? wait a few hours, a few days?) seems to have been turned into a struggle of epic proportions.

To respond to Island Dog:
I still don't think I've explained my problem well enough. The first account I used, is listed on the site Bug Me Not (http://www.bugmenot.com/view/www.wincustomize.com). The purpose of the site is to provide public accounts, to be used on sites which require free registration, so that one does not have to create/maintain an account on every site on which one wishes to peruse. What happened (and I am not leaving anything out) is that I tried to download the file, was asked to register, input the bugmenot login details (which, as far as I'm concerned, I'm well within my rights to do), got the error message. Logged out, registered a new account with wincustomize, the one I am using now, tried to download the file again, and was presented with that same error message. It was at this point I turned to the forum.

I'm not trying to "bypass the system". I am trying to legitimately use it. I can understand that you don't approve of the use of dummy accounts, and indeed, when it comes to sites that offer paid accounts, I wouldn't try to use an account that was not my own. If I was more aware of the download limit in place, then I would have immediately spotted that a public account would not be the way to go, however I assumed is was unmetered. I AM SORRY.

Oh, and in regards to Philly0381: I have not registered a program. I am using SysMetrix (as described in the first post), which is freeware, available for download without registration or limitation here (http://www.xymantix.com/sysmetrix/index.html).

This is a long post, so I may be replying to things that I have not read. I will get to you if this is the case.

According to what I've quoted above, I should be able to download '500MB's' just for having registered on the site. All I want for now is approximately 600 kilobytes. According to my calculations, that's about one tenth of one percent of the limit. The fact that I cannot achieve even that is really getting to me.

You HAVE been receiving a free service, AND goods. The artists that upload to this site, including myself, spend thousands of hours providing FREE skins, themes wallpapers etc. But to make it fair on everyone, and to help with the MASSIVE bandwidth costs of this site, and the staff to run it, we allow you to download up to 50Mb of goods before you have to help with the costs that you have been running up by downloading that 50Mb of goods. FIFTY Mb's is a LOT of stuff!!Don't you think it would be worth the price of a subscription to continue using the site and downloading the fantastic array of stuff on here? Or are you just one of those that thinks everything on the internet should be free, and if it isn't you'll get it from an illegitimate source?

You sound like a decent, intelligent person, so come on, do the right thing. It's not a lot of money is it? It's only a few bucks, and it's worth it for what you get.

If you don't agree with me, I think you should just give up on this site and get your stuff at somewhere like customize.org or deviantart.com, because we are a proper community, strong, and proud of each other and the things we do.
You could be a part of that too......... for just a few bucks.

Yes there is a workaround. All you need to do is crash your computer and start from scratch.

Its much easier to subscribe to wincustomize and get the full benefits.

I agree with your diagnosis. Now, just bear with me, and imagine that I might possibly be telling the truth. Just, for the purposes of discussion, imagine that I wasn't trying to scam the site or whatever it is people seem to see as the reason for not giving me a solution other than 'subscribe.'

Must I register a second account on a different IP to be free of this? Then I'm doing something which I feel will be taken the wrong way, i.e. 'oh look he's trying to deceive us with a new account.'

Is it possible for someone at StarDock to look at my account, confirm the fact that I've registered today, that my IP hasn't ever downloaded anything, and get rid of the error? If so, that would be dandy.

Here's my confusion . . the account you say you created today shows a creation date of Mar 29, 2005 and below the download cap.

So, again, something is not matching up and it's difficult to know where to go from here and still be equitable towards all users.

In regards to your right to use bugmenot, the Terms of service expressly state that you cannot impersonate another user.  There is no such thing as a public account.

Okay, I wasn't aware of that. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. There is a form located here (http://www.bugmenot.com/report.php) which allows site administrators to remove their site from the bugmenot database for reasons such as the above, I would be happy to submit the request if someone from StarDock says it's okay, otherwise I would suggest one of you submit the request yourselves to prevent this sort of thing from occurring again.

...

I did notice the 'creation date' of March 2005, I presume that's when the other account was created. There does seem to be a dual system involved, one dealing with wincustomize, the other with stardock. If you want I'd be happy to send you the email or a screenshot of the email I recieved when I registered the account to prove that the account was created today.

SilentDragoon, my first response was to your original post.

I went back and read your original post, and with out any more info at that time you presented yourself as a person looking for a workaround so you wouldn't have to do what everyone else does if they want something from this site. In your additional posts you have since explained your situation in more detail.

Was I quick to judge, sure I was. Did my replies change and attempt to offer assistance once you explained in more detail?

I seriously don't have $19.95 to spend. I don't have a way of transferring any money. And again, as I've said before:

I have not had 50 MBs. Trust me. Really. This is incredibly frustrating because I would totally agree with your suggestions IF I had had even 50 MBs. But I haven't, as I've said. It also says if you register, you get 500 MBs. If I had somehow exceeded the guest limit of 50 MBs (friends, family, neighbors on the same IP address?), then wouldn't I by registering be able to receive up to 500 MBs? Again, I haven't had that either. As a StarDock member has said, my account reads as being created a long time ago and having downloaded 20 MB. I don't know if you (non-StarDock personnel)can see that or not, I can take a screenshot if you wish.

Ah, frustrated.