Please help - I think I made a grave mistake

[bleblanc03]

I am in way over my head, here, and I am hoping that someone will help me out.


Facts:

I am an AutoCAD 2008 user on Vista Business SP1. My license is meant to be from a pool on our network server. Our IT guru, who installed the network deployment, has recently left the company and we are on our own (there are only a few of us). The deployment on our server tells me that "the version of the file is not compatible with my version of Windows," so I cannot install from there.


Here is what happened:

I had a trial version of Inventor (2008, I believe) on my machine. My trial ran up. I uninstalled Inventor and then AutoCAD DWG's would not auto-open in AutoCAD. I was getting an error that referred to not being able to locate Inventor.exe. I read here (http://discussion.autodesk.com/forums/thread.jspa?me ssageID =5587685) that I should repair my AutoCAD installation. So, that's what I did. The repair process prompted me for the AutoCAD 2008 DVD, so I located the disc associated with our network licenses and fed it to my Dell. After installing, the set-up prompted me to input a serial number. Hmm, I thought. I wonder what installing this straight from my machine will do to the other network licenses if I get an activation code? But I was left with no choice, so I typed in the serial number. I recieved an error stating that the serial number is invalid and a note mentioned that if I were a subscriber I should try my Group ID. Well, there was a subscription number next to the serial number - same format/no. of digits - so I typed that in. I got a page giving me four(?) activation codes. But I became instantly paranoid, and decided to reach out before going any further. By typing in the Subscription no. in place of the serial no., did I do anything wrong (e.g. enter a 'fraudulent' serial no., mess up the rest of the network installations by issuing new activation codes)?


As of now, AutoCAD is a stand-alone with serial no. 000-00000000, and I am prompted to register when I load up. How do I link it with our network license? Did I hurt the network installation?


I apologize for the narrative of my actions, but I didn't know how else to approach this. I will really appreciate help here. It is up to me, along with another engineer, to learn to administer the network now, anyway.


Thank you.


P.S. If you would like me to change the title of the posting to be more descriptive, please offer suggestions. I don't really know that this posting will be of much use to others, but perhaps I am not the only idiot to dive into the deep end with my shoes on....

[TravisNave]

First of all, relax. You are fine, you simply have a misconfigured AutoCAD installation. You aren't going to hurt your network install or create any such disaster for your company.

Now that you have taken a deep breath, you simply need to reconfigure your AutoCAD so that it is no longer a stand-alone version, but a network version instead.

I have listed this method several times on this discussion group. It involves modifying the registry. I know that this sounds scary to you as a regular user without an IT guy around, but the method is very simple.

First, open your registry by clicking Start then Run. This may not be in your Vista Start bar by default so hold the Windows key and the letter R. In the run box, type regedit and click OK.

In the registry, locate and expand the following keys on the left:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R17.1\ACAD-6001:409\AdLM

Note that your ACAD-6001:409 may be different if you don't have vanilla AutoCAD. Simply open whatever version you have here, obviously.

Now in the right panel, you will see a REG_DWORD named Type with a value of 2a (42) listed. Modify this value so that it is now hexidecimal value 19. When you click OK, the value will be 19 (25) listed instead.

Start AutoCAD and point it to your license server. You are done.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

The LICPATH.LIC file should also be copied from a
known, good installation, to c:\Program Files\AutoCAD 2008 folder.

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<TravisNave> wrote in message
href="news:6058318@discussion.autodesk.com">news:6058318@discussion.autodesk.com...

First
of all, relax. You are fine, you simply have a misconfigured AutoCAD
installation. You aren't going to hurt your network install or create any such
disaster for your company.

Now that you have taken a deep breath, you
simply need to reconfigure your AutoCAD so that it is no longer a stand-alone
version, but a network version instead.

I have listed this method
several times on this discussion group. It involves modifying the registry. I
know that this sounds scary to you as a regular user without an IT guy around,
but the method is very simple.

First, open your registry by clicking
Start then Run. This may not be in your Vista Start bar by default so hold the
Windows key and the letter R. In the run box, type regedit and click
OK.

In the registry, locate and expand the following keys on the
left:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R17.1\ACAD-6001:409\AdLM

Note
that your ACAD-6001:409 may be different if you don't have vanilla AutoCAD.
Simply open whatever version you have here, obviously.

Now in the right
panel, you will see a REG_DWORD named Type with a value of 2a (42) listed.
Modify this value so that it is now hexidecimal value 19. When you click OK,
the value will be 19 (25) listed instead.

Start AutoCAD and point it
to your license server. You are done.

Good
luck!