After several days of not usintg SPSS 29.0.2 on my desktop PC running MS Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, I started the program again today and was asked whether I wanted to enter a new license key or to continue with the existing key (I have a perpetual license). After confirming the existing key, the program started, but all of its settings were restored to their default status at the initial installation, i.e., all my custom settings, customized toolbars, etc., were lost.

This is now the third time that this has happened during the last two yaears or so, and it is pretty annoying becaus I have to customize my instrallation again, which will take me quite a while.

I know that SPSS stores its settings in the registry, which is not very convenient.

• Is it possible to save the persobnal custom settings from the registry so that they can be restored, should this happen again? How would I have to do this?
• I have a laptop computer with the same OS, the same version of SPSS and the same costomizations. On my laptop, my settings are still there. (How) can I transfer them from my laptop to my desktop system? 

I haven't ever seen this happen, but you can use regedit to save and subsequently restore the relevant keys.  I'm away from my computer for a few days but can look for the relevant key names some time next week.

Thank you so much, Jon, that would be great :)

Hi @Frank Furter
The key you are likely interested in is "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JavaSoft\Prefs\com\ibm\/S/P/S/S\/Statistics\one"
If you right-click on the "one" key and elect to "Export" you will get everything at that level and everything under it.  Take the resulting '*.reg' file to your other computer and "Import" the '*.reg' file.

It is odd that you would be losing these registry settings.  Are you operating in a virtualized environment where after you log out, of your VDI all of your registry settings are purged in favor of 'default' settings? Is it the case that you leave SPSS Statistics running, and it is only when you actually exit the product that you lose the registry?  That scenario could also be simply you not having permission in the registry to alter these keys.  so they live for as long as your SPSS Statistics session lives, but upon exit, the changes are never saved back to the registry.

None of that explains you being prompted for a new perpetual or term authorization code or license string though.

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David Dwyer
SPSS Technical Support
IBM Software
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Hi @David Dwyer,

thank you for providing the registry key - just made a backup of my SPSS registry entries in case this should happen again.

I do not use virtualization, and I work from an account with admin privileges that also allow me to modify the registry if needed. Normally, I use SPSS several times a week and, as I wrote in the initial post, this issue has occurred three times (as far as I recall) during the last two years or so. It may or may not be relevant that my Windows version has German localized settings whereas I normally use SPSS with the English language interface.

This has just happened again on the same machine (please see my original post above). Having backed up the registry key structure under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JavaSoft\Prefs\com\ibm\/S/P/S/S\/Statistics\one as advised, I was, however, in the fortunate position of being able to restore my customizations ;)