A message stating “Hardware not supported!” appears upon starting FrontFace.

If you get the message “Hardware not supported!” or "Activation Code: INVALID" when starting FrontFace, the software is not able to determine a unique identifier of your PC hardware. However, this is required for the licensing process. In this case either your PC hardware is damaged (corrupted firmware of the HDD or a damaged CPU) or you are trying to install the software in a virtualized environment.

If you can specifically reject that your PC hardware is damaged, you cannot use the “hardware-bound license” of FrontFace in this case. Instead you have to use the “portable license” (with USB dongle) in order to be able to run the software as licensed full version.

Another possible cause for this error is a corrupted/damaged WMI database. For Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 or Windows 11, click WINDOWS+R and enter CMD and run the following:

1. winmgmt /verifyrepository
If the result is shown as inconsistent, go to step 2

2. winmgmt /salvagerepository

3. winmgmt /verifyrepository - to check again WMI repository had been repaired successfully.

If you still get the message “Hardware not supported!” or "Activation Code: INVALID", please fully rebuild the WMI Repository by following these steps:
1. Disable and stop the winmgmt service
2. Remove or rename C:\Windows\System32\wbem\repository\
3. Enable and start the winmgmt service
4. Open a CMD prompt as Administrator
5. In the CMD prompt Navigate to C:\Windows\System32\wbem\
6. Run the following command:

for /f %s in ('dir /b *.mof') do mofcomp %s

Note: This will take a minute or so to complete.

7. Now run the command:

for /f %s in ('dir /b en-us\*.mfl') do mofcomp en-us\%s

Lastly, open PERFMON to verify that all counters can be loaded. If PERFMON generates a popup error, please follow this Microsoft KB to fix it: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2554336/en-us 

Last modified: 2022-10-25 10:29