ZBrushCentral

License Issues

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hey all

I just wonder if others have came across this issue before with regards to the license. My license seems to require re-activating every x number of days (of course, I’m now out of re-activations). I’ve previously been with support and have went though the process of applying a code to unlock it again etc.

That was last week, it’s now happening again with zbrush asking for me to activate.

  • I only have ZBrush on 1 system.
  • I haven’t done anything new or startling to the system - same drivers etc.
  • It’s not an internet connection problem.
  • I waited 30 mins before retrying in case it was a problem connecting to the activation server.

When this happened the first time, I reinstalled ZBrush completely - but it appears its back. I have ran a few virus scanners/mal ware scanners and all came back clean as expected.

System:
Windows Vista 64
Intel Q9550
8GB RAM
Nvidia 8800GTX 768MB

I was just wondering if anyone else as came across such problems with the license and if you found a solution.

Many thanks

Phil

#2

Do you have anything with RAID? Are you connecting/disconnecting disk drives? These are no-nos with ZB’s current activation system. You should open a ticket if you have either of these situations and the support guys will fix you up. (The RAID issue in particular is a known issue with the current 3.x versions. Hopefully 3.5 will fix this.)

#3

Thanks for the hint. I just doubled checked and although my system does support a RAID configuration, I have all options disabled for it in the BIOS. Unless my SATA drives are doing something do screw it up each time, but I doubt it’s that.

Cheers though.

#4

Plugging and unplugging an external SATA drive will sometimes trip the license control system. (Had this happen with my laptop which has a SATA port.) Safer (though slower) to use USB or IEEE 1394 until they work out their license manager. :wink:

Apparently RAIDs (and external SATA connections) will sometimes change the LUN order of drives, just based on how they power up. If LUNs get associated with the wrong drives (e.g. a different order than when the product was licensed), the license manager (a variation of FlexLM I think) becomes confused and thinks that it has been moved to an unauthorized drive. Hence it breaks the license and demands to be re-licensed.

USB and IEEE 1394 are expected to pop in and out (unlike SATA in Vista) so this is probably why external SATA connections will trip the system and USB and Firewire don’t.

-K