I am having this problem too.
Updated my hardware today, new CPU, motherboard and GPU, and updated to 1.2.9, so I need to revalidate my activation keys.
I run a quick start or a mission editor mission, I get a prompt to activate each of my DCS modules. Each one repeatedly needs to be activated, but no activation seems to take place and the activation program seems to crash after several attempts. Every single time, I click to activate, it says "you have 7 activations left" as if it was working properly, but as soon as you click an acknowledgement, the same module wants to be activated again.
Using the protect.exe in administrator mode does not work either. Same process happens as above, but it seems to crash more quickly.
Problem occurs with and without antivirus running.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.