Painfully hard activation procedure

[chris.de.roover]

Hello,

Our school is experiencing a lot of troubles with the (re)activation of our 20 multiseat standalone licenses for Autocad. I don't know whether the procedure has changed in Autocad 2014; before we never had any issues.

Due to organisational reasons, we had to change twice the room for our Autocad course.

The first time I made a mistake: I forgot to run the license transfer tool in the old room. Therefore I received activation limit reached errors in the new room, which seems logical. Then I ran the license transfer tool but it didn't change anything for the new room. So I requested new activation codes. I got those and was able to activate about 10 pcs.

Then we had to do the 2nd move to another classroom. This time I first ran the license transfer tool in the old room. Still, in the new room I got the activation limit reached error on all pcs, so I couldn't otherwise but run them in trial mode. I requested once again activation codes. I was able to install them on 3 pc's but on the other ones the activation wizard triggers right away the activation limit error 10 without displaying the "I have an activation code" option.

I opened a case (09266334) but no answer since last Wednesday. Next week is a school holiday and we have only 7 days left in our trial period, so I fear for the class of March 10th.

So this post is meant:

1 to bump our case

2 to learn more about licensing and activation. Can onyone tell me what the use is of the transfer license tool? I would have expected that transferred licenses were available for reassiging to other pc's but that does not seem correct. Also, we reinstall our school pcs twice a year. If we will have to go throught all the hassle we are experiencing now, that's not very encouraging to continue with the product.

Kind regards

Chris

[dgorsman]

For your situation, I would encourage you switch to network licenses in the strongest possible language.  Having that kind of turnover will not work well with stand-alone licensing.  We had just a *few* more multi-seat licenses than you with high staff turnover, and it was havoc trying to keep everything straight.

[chris.de.roover]

I guess you're right about the type of licenses we should use. On the other hand, we use all licenses on 2 different locations, so we would have to set up a redundant license server model which seems a lot of overkill for 20 licenses.

What also puzzles me is that in the past we've never had license issues, even though I've never used the Transfer License Tool before reinstalling our pcs.

[dgorsman]

Multiple locations, as in physically remote buildings?  You might have a few options besides redundant servers.  That would best be discussed with your IT and reseller.  For example, our licenses are hosted in a completely different city.  If you do switch to network licenses also have a look at the tracking tools from JTB.

We've found that with MSSA licenses its *very* easy to overrun your allowed activations without very detailed tracking.  At some later point you start hitting roadblocks like you have.

[chris.de.roover]

Physically remote locations indeed, and at this moment no vpn between them.

I am certainly prepared to look for other options but I hope they won't cost more than the (educational) licenses themselves 😉

[chris.de.roover]

I just got the following answer from support, so now I'm really stuck 😞

We would like to share with you that we are unable to reset the activations done for your license.