Will never be able to access my Lightoom catalog data again without subscription!

For a number of years, I have used Lightroom 6 without issue.  Yesterday, I had to reinstall Windows because of an unrecoverable crash.

When I tried to install LR6, it warned me that my 2 activations are taken up and that I would have to deactivate on one of my other computers.

I only have 1 computer!  (I remember I also had an uncoverable crash a few years ago on the same PC.)

So, I spoke with Adobe support, and they said that it is impossible to recover this situation as they no longer have access to the licencing server in question, and told me that I would have to take out a subscription to access my data.

I was (and still am) disgusted by this.  Years of data not accessible to me through no fault of my own.

Is there anything that can be done?

(I appreciate that support stopped some time ago, but that should not stop me accessing my data.)