Hold on, there, Macfaithful! You have jumped to an awfully big--and rather demeaning--conclusion. I, too, have had exactly the same "can't find default location" error, and I am an official, fully-paid and registered owner of FCP. There is something going on here, and it has nothing to do with cracked or illegal software. Rather, I suspect it is related to my having possibly moved, aliased, and/or renamed a FCP folder or other component, but I don't have time right now to try to figure it out.) --bosskev