Aperture Registration Screen ad nauseum

I have had an issue with my 17" macbook pro, last model made, 16 gb ram, getting slower and slower. I've kept most information on externals, lots of backups to TM (x2) and offsite with backblaze.

I noticed on OWC a sale on SSD. I can replace my HD with a new 490gb SSD and put a larger HD in the DVD bay. Works like a charm.

I have more room than ever before.

Oh has this ever cost me, though.

I can't backup to backblaze anymore (working with them on that). Seems the new SSD HD has just thrown everything off and now I need to completely start from scratch and spend weeks with my computer backing up. I have the fastest home verizon FiOs one can ask for, but I also have a lot of photos and video. Perhaps too much so. This is going to take forever. Biggest fear of mine is electrical. I live in a location where electrical storms are intense and unpredictable, have two layers of redundancy on backup power supplies and power surge protection, for whatever that is worth.

Nothing like waking up in the middle of a storm that wasn't predicted and feel the lightning/thunder rocking the house. Neighbor/friend of ours had a direct hit a few months ago and her house was fried. She walked in and found her fireplace on, ice cubes all over the floor, TV's and everything electrical fried, you get the idea. I kid you not when I say we were just moved in here in 2003 (between Fort Worth and Oklahoma) and were looking at the storm out our back window. All four of us. We had never seen such violence in the air coming from South Texas all our lives. The storms in the plains of North Texas near the Oklahoma border are most impressive. We witnessed a lightening strike right in front of our eyes in our back yard. It sucked the air out of the room (seemingly) and time seemed to freeze for just a moment. The percussive shock a second later popped our ears and we all scattered like mice. It was a sight. Ears rang afterwords too.

Needless to say, I look at my in-house backup (12TB Pegasus and Buffalo 4TB) as only a quick fix. Theft, fire, and especially electricity can undo those in a hurry.

I am frustrated. I suppose I could have worse to worry over, so I need to count my blessings. There was a time in 2008 when I wanted to get out of a hospital bed while fighting aggressive B cell lymphoma for 8 months. I really have nothing of substance to complain about.

Yet starting this process to increase internal HD capacity and speed up the computer (was getting very slow and HD was acting odd) is really frustrating.

The primary reason for my post:

At the moment, having trouble with Aperture. I, for whatever reason, have found every disk I have every owned except my Aperuture disks. I pulled the app off of TM. I've been doing a full fresh reload on everything, but had to go with the copy of Aperture from TM.

I'm almost ready to just chuck all this effort and buy another copy of Aperture for $79 from the app store. Endless downloads sound nice about right now.

I can't get past the registration screen easily. I have been trying for weeks. I have all the info: original numbers, upgrade numbers. I have to enter all my info, and then I have to enter the upgrade key, then I have to enter the original key. In that order, every time. My info, then prompts for upgrade key, then original key. If I reverse the order of the keys, it says they are not valid.

Whiny, I know. But frustrating. I have trashed preferences to no avail. I keep looking for my disks, and daily, I keep entering the same information. Over and over each time I start up Aperture.

Due to the high unpredictable electrical nature of things, I keep all my electronics unplugged and away from any wires unless I am actually on them. Not sure that will help, but gives me the satisfaction of believing I am doing all I can to protect it.

But this approach requires me to start it up each day I use it, sometimes several times a day.

I will say, the upgrade is incredibly zippy. It was taking almost two minutes from pushing the power button to having Aperture open. Now it is a matter of 15 seconds or so.

Ideas on what to do to stop this registration issue ad nauseum? I'm also open to ideas any of you photo/video hobbiest like me might have for further electrical safety and back up redundancy.

I sure don't want to lose all this work.

Thanks