Borrowed Licence not working in AutoCAD 2015

[JeffBuckKC]

I work in IT Support at a large further education college, and we have recently upgraded from AutoCAD Mechanical 2013 to AutoCAD Mechanical 2015. Since the upgrade we have been having a problem with using borrowed licences.

A regular user can power up and log onto a laptop using the wireless network, they can then launch AutoCAD 2015 and borrow a licence following the normal procedure (Help > About > Product Information > Borrow Licence) and get a message that the licence has been successfully borrowed. They can then close AutoCAD and disable the WiFi, when trying to launch AutoCAD 2015 they get the FLEXnet License Finder window popping up, meaning that AutoCAD is unusable away from the network. They have then re-enabled the WiFi and returned the borrowed licence.

I have then logged onto the same laptop with my admin account, again using wireless rather than a wired connection. I can launch AutoCAD 2015 and borrow a licence and get a message that the licence has been successfully borrowed. I then close AutoCAD and disable the WiFi, I can then launch AutoCAD products ok.

As this issue only seems to affect regular users, and not administrators, it would appear to be an access rights issue. At no point during testing have I used the wired network, so the MAC tie in issue should not be the problem here. Could someone please advise where the borrowed licence information is stored, so that I can check the file/folder permissions in order to try and resolve this issue.

[ampster40]

not the answer you are looking for but it's recommended to run cad software with admin priv's or at a minimum as a "Power User".

Good luck though.

[dgorsman]

Aside from power-user priviledges there may also be differences in power settings ie. if something isn't being used then its switched off automatically. The system isn't considered the same as when the license is borrowed so effectively, no license.  We've had this problem with many a laptop.

[TravisNave]

The borrow is stored in the registry.  If the license is borrowed and the network hardware and/or user login changes while offline, then the borrowed license will not be recognized.  As my colleague stated, the user rights issue is also a major sticking point, especially since it requires registry access.

[JeffBuckKC]

Hi Travis,

Do you know which key the borrow is stored in? I can then do some testing by only granting access to the relevant key.

[TravisNave]

Yes.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\FLEXlm License Manager\Borrow

The key is user specific and MAC address specific.  Good Luck!

[standrewscc]

Hi, I'm in exactly the same situation as the OP... IT Manager at a large college and can't get the licence borrowing to work.

I've followed the above suggestions but no luck.  I can't see how even a non-admin user would have problems writing to their own registry hive (HKEY_CURRENT_USER) but I added full control permissions anyway and still no luck.

I eventually made the student user a local admin and it still didn't work, even though Domain Administrator worked.  So I know that the MAC address part is fine because I tried the same method under both user accounts.  

So now it turns out that making the student account a local admin isn't good enough... there is something in Group Policy that is also stopping it working.

I have too many lockdowns to go through one at a time so is someone able to tell me if there is specific User Rights Assignment or similar that has to be enabled for non-admin accounts to successfully borrow a licence?

Thanks, Damon

[standrewscc]

Ok after a lot of time spent testing this issue I found a solution.

It's not a very elegant solution but basically when the FLEXlm License error pops up, you press Cancel 12 times.

Yes, 12 times... I kid you not.  Once you do that, Inventor 2015 will finally realise that you've borrowed a license and let you run the program.

It would be nice, however, if this buggy software could be fixed and we didn't have to go through this craziness for a seemingly simple function to work.

Cheers, Damon

[JeffBuckKC]

Hi Damon,

I also tried playing about with rights settings on HKCU, to no avail.  Setting the user as a local admin did work for me in the short term, but our Group Policy is set to remove this right if it is not specifically set on the user's account by Global Group.

The only thing that did eventually work for me was a bit of a sledgehammer approach. There is an Autodesk folder within each of 'Program Files', 'Program Files (x86)' & 'Program Data', I granted all users 'Modify' access to these folders and this seems to have resolved the issue. As it is only a handful of staff who require offsite access, I have only done this on their laptops, not globally.

I hope this works for you,

Jeff.

P.S.

I hope you don't use Edgecam in a hotdesking environment, even the basic licensing info is in HKCU.....