Frequently asked questions
Antivirus warnings, mirror speeds, and what happens after a Windows update.
The same questions arrive through the contact form every week. These are the answers, written once so they are here at three in the morning when the contact form is not going to help you.
Why does my antivirus flag these files?
Because activation tooling and antivirus software do the same things to a system, and the scanner cannot tell which one it is looking at. Modifying a program's licence checks looks identical to modifying it for any other reason, so it gets flagged on principle. This is also why every installation page here starts with the same instruction about switching protection off during setup.
Do the archives have passwords?
No. Not on any release here, and we will not start. Archive passwords exist to defeat automated scanning, and the only person they actually inconvenience is the one trying to open the file. If a page tells you an archive from here is password protected, you are not on our site.
The download seems slow. What can I do?
Try a different regional mirror first, since the closest one is not always the fastest at a given hour. For anything above about four gigabytes, a download manager makes a real difference because it splits the transfer across several connections and resumes cleanly if the line drops. Large packages also carry a torrent magnet, which is usually the quickest route of all.
How do I know a package is complete?
Compare the size against the figure on the release page before extracting. Nearly every failed extraction is a truncated download rather than a bad package, and a size check catches it in a second. If the extraction still fails at the same point twice, the mirror has a problem and we want to hear about it.
Will these keep working after a Windows update?
In almost all cases, yes. Feature updates occasionally reset the licence state on a small number of titles, and the fix is to run the same step from the package again. Nothing needs to be reinstalled from scratch.
Do I need to disable antivirus permanently?
No, only during extraction and setup. Once the program is installed and running, turn protection back on and add an exclusion for the installation folder if the scanner keeps returning to it. Leaving a machine unprotected is a much bigger problem than any of these packages solve.
Why is the download bigger than the official one?
Because the official download is often a small stub that fetches everything else afterwards. Ours is the fully unpacked application with every component already included, which is what makes an offline installation possible in the first place.
Can I use these on more than one machine?
There is nothing counting installations, so yes. Bear in mind that each machine needs its own installation run, including the step at the end, rather than a copy of the program folder.
What happens to old versions?
They are removed when the release is rebuilt. Keeping every historical build sounds generous but nobody tests them, they accumulate problems, and they make a library look larger than it usefully is. If you specifically need an older build, the requests page is the place to ask.
Is there an account or a sign up?
No, and there will not be. Everything on this site is reachable without an account, an email address, or a survey. Every site that puts one of those between a visitor and a file is making money from the visitor rather than giving them anything.
Still stuck?
The installation guide covers the general procedure in more detail than a release page has room for. If the answer is not there either, the contact form reaches somebody who can reproduce the fault.