How do I deactivate a start11 installation I no longer have access to (formatted)

I think you'll find your answer here:

https://forums.stardock.com/486311/accounts-and-activation-support-faq/page/1#deactivateproduct

Thank you, oddly it shows no activations.

Trying to.understand. Why were you trying to deactivate? Did you receive a warning that you'd used all your activations?

I am testing custom windows installation images on a VM, so the installation is only temporary.  Silent activation is more convenient than using a guest license.

I dont want to use all my activations on that.   So the intention was to deactivate at end of test. 

When I install Windows 11 on my desktop and laptop for daily use I wont deactivate those.

Great. Then just do as suggested in the link. Should be fine.

Activations are not shown on the main products page, which is likely why it came back empty. They sit one level down.

Log in at store.stardock.com/myaccount/products, click View Product Keys, then click the '...' icon next to the key. That opens a window listing the activations and which PC each one is on, and you can deactivate a machine from there without needing access to it.

If that view is still empty, Order History gives you a second look at the same data. Download Product Key Status .CSV and open it in Excel. The Registered To column names the computers the product is activated on. A formatted machine that was never deactivated should still show up in one of those two places.

For the VM cycle you described, the thing that saves you doing this again is deactivating from the command line as part of tearing the machine down, while it still exists.

SdDisplay.exe -deactivate -prodID=2674 -prodName="Start11" -company="Stardock" -prodVer="[the version you have installed]"

SdDisplay.exe lives in the product's own folder under C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock, so point it at your Start11 folder. The published example is written for Fences and uses that product's path.

Two things in that line catch people out. -company is always literally "Stardock", never your own company name, and that is the most common self-inflicted cause of a failed activation or deactivation. And the product ID for Start11 v2 is 2674, not the 2663 that appears in most of the silent install examples, because 2663 is v1. The IDs change with each major version.

To check whether a given VM is actually holding a seat, look for \ProgramData\Stardock\Start11\license.sig. A successful activation creates it and a successful deactivation removes it.

One rule worth having before you bake any of this into an image: deploy unactivated and activate on the destination machine. If you activate first and then lay the image down, the license.sig gets overwritten and the activation goes with it.

Yes its always unactivated when I install, so I have the prompt to supply a license or start a guest trial.

I since stopped installing it in the VM and was waiting to do my proper installs, but to test the recent info from Haalee I installed it again in the VM and tried putting the correct version number in the command, as that didnt match (company name and product ID already correct), but now it doesnt activate at all now, I also cant activate manually in the UI, the circle just spins forever.  I am pretty sure it was activating, but wanted to verify if the license file is in place.

I activated it offline, the sig file is there, I will contact stardock directly about what I am seeing in the my products area.

The activation window is the only part of Start11 that needs .NET, and that window also hosts Internet Explorer components. On a stock Windows install you never notice either. On a custom image they are among the first things to get trimmed, which fits what you are seeing: the app itself runs, and only the activation UI hangs.

Rather than fight that in a VM you are going to tear down anyway, activate from the command line and skip the UI entirely. Note that it is a different executable and a different version flag from the deactivate command:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock\Start11"\SASUpgrade.exe -prodId=2674 -prodName="Start11" -company="Stardock" -ver="[the version you have installed]" -email="[your account email]" serial="[your key]"

Deactivation is SdDisplay.exe with -prodVer. Activation is SASUpgrade.exe with -ver. The two are not interchangeable. The stray quote after the folder path is how the command is published, so leave it exactly like that.

Kill the activation UI first or it sits there competing with the command:

taskkill /f /im SdDisplay.exe

Neither command line path works for a trial or a Steam copy. Paid key only, which is your case.

One thing worth acting on before you rebuild that VM: license.sig is present, so it is holding a seat right now whatever the UI is telling you. Deactivate it while the machine still exists.

Contacting us directly about the My Products view is the right move. Account and licence questions are one of the few things that belong in email rather than the forums, so you are not going to get bounced back here.