Hi everyone - I doubt if this is the right forum for this post, but I really don't know which one is. I'm looking for hopefully some contact info for Steve Cox, who at one time was the person who ran the UV Mapper website. I bought UV Mapper Pro some years back, and used it religiously. Recently I had to deal with a hard drive crash and found that when I installed my original download of the program on my new machine, I can do everything but save... it says my copy is unregistered, and the go to the UV Mapper website to register it.

When I try to contact Mr Cox via the website, he doesn't answer and it looks like the site hasn't been updated since at least 2018!

I've tried several workarounds including

1. UV Mapping in Wings 3D which is painfully difficult

2. UV mapping in Blender.... but I feel like I need an advanced degree from NASA to understand any of the Blender tools and interfaces

3. Everyone raves about Ultimate Unwrap 3D, but honestly, money is a bit tight for me since this is just a hobby, and not how I earn a living... the $60 price tag is something I can't justify spending at the moment

So again, if anyone has any info on how to contact him, so I can get up and running again, I'd really appreciate it

Thanks so much -

Steve R.

When I bought UV Mapper Pro (3.7a) years ago I got my license with a "your full name.reg" file via e-Mail and if you saved this license elsewhere you can just doubleclick this reg file to register your UV mapper Pro at anytime and it works with W7, W10 as well, there is no need to register at the website from Steve Cox again.

Unfortunately I didn't copy or write it down anywhere else, and the e-mail address I used at the time is long gone

An alternative would be UVMapper classic, it's still available and free or in case you are able to read or restore somehow the old registry from your crashed hard drive then you could just copy the key for uvmapper under the following path HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareSteve Cox ConsultingUVMapper and enter in your new registry.

I can read the old hard drive, but where on it would I look for the registry key? I would think it's in the UV Mapper Pro folder, but if it is, I don't see it. Might it be located somewhere else on the old hard drive? In another file or folder perhaps?

Ok, I try to help you. If you have good computer knowledge then you should know what I'm talking about and it will be easy for you to recover your license, otherwise it's probably a litte hard to understand what I try to explain here.

1. You have to read the ntuser.dat file from your crashed hard disk, therefore you should enable all hidden files in Explorer first in order that you are able to see the ntuser.dat file because it's a hidden file.

2. Find and open your user profile on the crashed hard disk and under your username you should see the ntuser.dat file. Copy the ntuser.dat file in any temp folder on your current computer

3. Open your Registry Editor (c:_windows_regedit.exe) as an administrator or just type regedit in your search box.

4. Mark or highlight HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and load the ntuser.dat from the temp folder under the file menu with load structure.

5. In case you are asked for a keyname simply enter temp or any other name and then open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and navigate to the given name and find the path Software and the key Steve Cox Consulting. Export the whole key and give it any name, this will produce a reg file and then you can just doubleclick this reg file and your UVMapperPro is registered again.

6. Delete the imported temporary key structure again

Hope this helps and good luck!

Ok, I'll have a go...

Trendmaster, I'm on the right path I believe, but I'm not clear on something.... Step4: Mark or highlight HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and load the ntuser.dat from the temp folder under the file menu with load structure.

When I highlight my local machine and then click the File menu at the top, I see "Load Hive" as one option. Is that where you're talking about placing my ntuser.dat file?

Yes,that's right it's called "Load Hive", sorry for my bad translation, since I work with German Operating Systems sometimes I can't remember how the menus are called in English, but since you found the registry editor and the ntuser.dat file it looks like you are on the right path. In case you have another question I will answer tomorrow, because it's 01:30 AM here in Europe and I have to go sleep now. :-)

Ah, I see. Thank you so very much

Ok, I did everything you said and still, when I try to save a model out of UV Mapper Pro, it says it's an unregistered version. Should I delete and re-install the program? Would that help?

Can you confirm that your path in the registry looks like this after you exported and entered the new reg file into your registry with a doubeclick?

HKEY_CURRENT_USER""Software""Steve Cox_Consulting""UVMapper

Please note: The key should be under HKEY_CURRENT_USER and not HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

Mark the key UVMapper within your registry and you should see a value name and your long key code that you exported from the ntuser.dat file.

Please also note: the bought version is different from the demo version that's available for download on the website - your registry key will not work with a demo version of UVMapperPro! If the help menu about box says "Unregistered Demo Version" you'll need to replace it with the original program that you bought.

Let me take a look and I'll let you know shortly....

Ok, I found the correct path under "current user" instead of "local machine". However, now when I attempt to load the ntuser.dat file, I go to "file" and the "load hive" command is grayed out and so I can't load it into the registry. If it was accessible, I could load it. Here's what it looks like

You have to mark HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE in order that you are able to Load a Hive, otherwise the menu is shown grayed out, but after you exported the "Steve Cox Consulting key" from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE it has to be imported in HKEY_CURRENT_USER, it's a little complicated I know. But, the way I see it your imported keys look correct except that there is no name and no value on the right. This means, you hilighted the correct key named UVMapper but there is no value (a long key code) on the right.

Here is how it looks

If you can read the correct key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE you can also try to enter the key manually with a string and copy and paste it into HKEY_CURRENT_USER in UVMapper on the right.

The UVMapper key is the only important one, you can forget all the other keys under UVMapper and if you have installed the latest UVMapperPRO Version 3.7a (for compatibility reasons with W8, W10) it should work.

Please let me know in case you don't understand what I mean. I did the same and it worked for Windows 7 and Windows 10.

Okay, trying it now. By the way, thank you for being so patient with me on this :)

Ok, so I seem to be stuck.... I loaded the ntuser.dat file in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. Nothing shows up on the right side. But then I highlighted the folder on the left, and told it to export. I then imported that folder into HKEY_CURRENT_USER>software>Steve Cox_consulting>UV mapper It says the keys and values in my temp file have been successfully added to the registry. But again, there's nothing on the right side except for the default key. At this point I feel lost.....

I think I see what the problem is... maybe.

1. I export the ntuser.dat file (from my old hard drive) into a temporary folder on my desktop
2. Then, while using registry editor, I copy and paste that file into HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE> software>WOW6432Node>Steve Cox_Consulting

2a) At this point, something should show up in the right side of my registry editor window... a long text string which is the registry key

1. I highlight that string and go to file>export, and export it to HKEY_CURRENT_USER>software>Steve Cox Consulting>UVMapper
2. I then go to file>import and import that text string

4a) At this point, the text string should show up on the right side

I believe those are the proper steps. My problem, if I'm correct, is that in steps 2a and 4a, there's no text string that shows up. Almost as if I'm importing and exporting nothing. So.... does the ntusers.dat file need to be opened or decoded before I attempt to export it from my desktop into the registry editor?

Please note: all the paths I type in here are without a backslash, how I have to enter a backslash here?

It looks that something went terribly wrong with your load hive, the procedure that you describe above was not the procedure that I explained earlier, anyway next step, let's try the following:

1. create a folder in your c: drive and name the folder temp (c:temp)

2. copy the ntuser.dat from your crashed hard disk into this new temp folder (c:tempntuser.dat)

3. open a command prompt as an administrator (use the context menu from the command prompt) and type the following command: (reg load hklmtemp ntuser.dat) and press enter like this:

4. open your registry editor (regedit) and open the following path: (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINEtempSoftwareSteve Cox Consulting and highlight the key UVMapper)

5. Now can you confirm that you see the long key code on the right?

If this is the case, then you can continue with the next step, but if you don't see any long key code on the right I'm afraid there is no key on the crashed hard disk or the key was deleted on the crashed hard disk somehow, since you should see the code now with the explained procedure below the HKLM_Local_Machine temp path. It's important that you follow excatly these steps, otherwise the data from the old ntuser.dat wouldn't be imported into you registry in a correct manner.

Well it looks like it's not going to work.I did exactly as you said and when I hit "enter" on the command prompt, this is what I got

ERROR: An I/O operation initiated by the registry failed unrecoverably. The registry could not read in, or write out, or flush, one of the files that contain the system's image of the registry. Seems like there's something wrong with the registry on my crashed hard drive. So, it's on to the next step and time to track down and learn how to use a new mapping app.

I'm sorry to hear that it's not going to work for you, I guess the I/O operation is blocked now because the registry is in use after you imported the ntuser.dat before. Did you already delete the imported temp registry hive and rebooted your computer? I know it's a little bit complicated to follow all the necessary steps, let me know if you want give it a try tomorrow again. Perhaps it would be better to show you all the necessary steps via pictures instead of lengthy explanations to the whole process. On the other hand if you learn an up to date new mapping app has advantage over an old app from 2018.

Sorry for being late to this conversation. If you can spare abour $16.00 USD for a month rental of Rizom, I highly recommend it as a UV mapping tool. There is a 30-day free trial as well. Here's the link to the vendor site. If you only need to fix a bunch of stuff, a month's rental is not a bad deal. https://www.rizom-lab.com/#VS Also, this product is pretty intuitive and has a short learning curve.

If you've got just one object to fix or finish, and you can get it into *.fbx or *.obj file format, I'll try to UV map it for you in Maya. Just let me know.

@ forester Better late than never! :-) ...but honestly, no subscription for several reasons and I would never ever rent an app if this is just a hobby, even if it costs only $2 per months, but this is just my personal opinion of course.

@ arrowhead42, as a last remark, I think I see what the problem was when you tried to follow my steps.

you said above:

1. I export the ntuser.dat file (from my old hard drive) into a temporary folder on my desktop
2. Then, while using registry editor, I copy and paste that file into HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE> software>WOW6432Node>Steve Cox_Consulting

but, at this point you was looking in the wrong path for your key code!

if you followed my steps to temporarily import the ntuser.dat your key code isn't imported in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE> software>WOW6432Node>Steve Cox_Consulting

The path WOW6432Node lead just to an empty key with the same name Steve Cox Consulting, you would have to look instead in the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>temp>Software>Steve Cox Consulting

the key named "temp" is the important path or whatever you named the temporary key while you imported the ntuser.dat

Forget the path WOW6432Node, this would be the wrong path to find your key code on the right side after you imported your ntuser.dat as a first step.

By the way, after you reboot your machine the I/O operation error should be gone, I think there's nothing wrong with the registry on your crashed hard drive, as you was able to copy it over to your current machine. But if you are not familiar with the registry, it could be dangerous to delete or overwrite the wrong path and damage your Windows OS of course, it depends on how you are experienced with these kind of operations.

Should you decide to learn an new app this would be a good and hassle-free decision as well of course.

Forester, I'll take a look amd see what it's all about. Thanks for the lead. And Trendmaster, I didn't know that rebooting my PC would get rid of the I/O error. I'll give it a try here shortly and let you know how it goes. I recently scrounged up the money to buy Ultimate Unwrap 3D and it looks quite complicated. I'd say the interface looks to me like a complexity level somewhere between UV Mapper Pro and Blender which looks incredibly complicated to me. But all in all, I believe you're right in that it would be a good thing to learn new software, instead of relying on something from a few years ago, which the developer clearly doesn't care about any longer. I'd still like to have UV Mapper as an option if I can, but I'll see how things go. I'll let you know when I get the chance

arrowhead42, maybe there is a better and more straightforward option for you to restore the license for your UVMapperPro.

I don't know what excatly happened with your crashed hard disk and what OS you use (W7 W10), but since you are able to read the registry data from this crashed hard disk, is there any chance that you can boot your OS from this crashed hard disk once again?

My thought was, if you could disconnect your hard disk from the current working machine and connect the crashed hard disk once again, chances are that you could read your registry (use regedit) with ease once again, without the hassle to import and export the data from the ntuser.dat file first, because all you need is your license (the long key code on the ride side from the UVMapper key in your registry editor) in order to restore your UVMapperPro. Is it worth the trouble for you to try it?

If you decide that you don't want give up UVMapperPro, I think you have all the necessary informations and options now to restore UVMapperPro. I was in the same boat years ago and then I decided this will never happen again with any software I bought. Good luck either with UVMapper or any other new app you are willing to learn! Greetings!

Trendmaster, Actually it turned out that the hard drive didn't crash.... the graphics card I had been using, was crashing and it imitated the symptoms of a hard drive crash. To shorten a long story, I can tell you that I have an internal solid state hard drive and the older drive works fine and is connected to my machine via a USB cable, so I can access whatever is on it. And I can tell you that I tried to run UV Mapper off the old drive as though it were still my primary drive and even doing that, says it's an unregistered copy

Well, since your hard drive obviously isn't actually crashed, it looks like your license was deleted somehow at a particular time, maybe you overwrited the registry key with a new setup of UVMapperPro or something like this. In this case unfortunately there is nothing I can do for you, since you can nothing restore where there is nothing to restore. At least you know now that you should immediately make a backup in future for all your licenses!

Happy learning with your new mapping tool, to learn something new is fun at least and favorably as well, nothing is really lost in life, only a question of time :-)

Indeed. Thank you again, so much for all the help and patience. I've already learned how to create a basic texture map with Ultimate Unwrap 3D, which is really what I wanted it for. But i can tell you there appear to be a great many other features which I find fun and yet a bit scary.... seems like so much to learn!