I have exactly the same problem. I did configure my firewall to let the DSS-Lite communicate with activations.open-e.com port 10444. Then I was be able to register and got the email reply with the password. But under activation I still get the error message that DSS-Lite cannot connect to the Open-E server. Do I need to open more ports?

I don't see why we should try to register another email address or reset the NIC configuration, if we did configure it well. But I did try as you advised and it is still not working. So I guess either I need to open some more ports or the activation server does not work. Or can NAT be the problem?

Tanks,
Marcus