Seems this 1.7.x branch activation is broken.
I emailed the official support address and got no response.
So I have had it installed for several years now on windows 8.1 v1.7.5.
It somehow has deactivated so I guess activation is not honoured forever unless it can somehow reauthenticate, and when i try to manually reactivate, nothing really happens, also it says signature check failed.