Actually yes. Not a nice workaround, but works. Got the idea from another thread here, and can confirm it works.
Use NO-CD Crack, then you can play with your official and paid game under a paid service. It's nice, isn't it? :D
With this method you bypass the issues with Activation.dll...
@BlueCheese66769 joining in this thread, after weeks of trying to figure out why Zero Hour and Red Alert won't load after mandatory EA update. I tried everything in many other forums and none of them worked. Finally saw my event log error with the exact same activation.dll error as this thread.
Can you elaborate on the NO-CD crack workaround?
