Hello everyone,

I was looking into how various things worked in terms of houdini setup and although I understand that apprentice and maybe indie? licenses run differently, this problem seems to be a problem before any license is even in the picture, and I am wondering if it has something to do with the latest windows10 updates and if permissions somehow changed?

Problem:
After installing houdini with the commercial license server, the license server refuses to start and cannot be started manually either. I have tried 3 different build-versions of houdini too, and I have tried on 2 different pc's, same result.

please see attachment.

It gives me an error 2 saying it can't find the file, but the sesinetd.exe clearly exists in the right location. I also for fun tried to move it and point houdini to it at a different location, by changing the path in regedit, but it just gives me a different error, still won't actually start it.

I have tried to google and poke around to see, but no luck, so I am wondering if anyone has seen this before?

I wonder if you login to windows as superduper-admin if it still happens…. (yes my normal user is admin, but im sure you know how windows messes with user profiles all the time).

anyway thanks!

If you contact the kind folks at support@sidefx.com they can sort you out.

After installing houdini, restart the computer.

Did you end up finding a solution yet? I am having the same issue and wanted to know if there was a possible fix you found? This never happened before however I did update windows

Suffering the same problem and so far no clues.

I have several machines on the latest Windows 10 update running okay but trying to install the latest 16.5 build stitched me - the license server doesn't start now = no license activation and even re-installing 16.0.705 suffers the same issue; it's as if there's some problem registering the service.

Support hasn't got a lock on it so far so i'm scraping log files to see what's what…

Just wanted to leave a bread crumb here.

I d/l and installed the latest Daily Build, and received Error 2 - had never had this problem before until after latest Windows 10 Update ( I believe its called Creators Update) was installed.

So, I looked at my Windows Services and the Houdini License Services where not started - I tried to manually start them and they would not start (saying they could not be found). So, I ran the installer again, only installing the Commercial License server. I let that finish and still couldnt start the Houdini License Services.

Did a quick Google Search which lead me to this thread and discovered I need to reboot after install.

I quickly rebooted and the first thing I did was goto Windows Services and try to start my Houdini License Services again…welp…they were already Started!

So, looks like on Windows 10 Creators builds, you have to Restart OS after a Houdini install.

Hope this helps and thanks for posting the solution here.

yeah, I had the exact same issue. beat my head against the wall, it started working but I didn't equate the restart of Win10 to the installation/licensing problem.

Hi!

I have the same exact issue.
But restarting didn't solve the issue.

Any other clue?

So…
Installing 16.0.705 back makes 16.0.821 licence server work…

Try this :
sc create HoudiniLicenseServer binPath= C:\windows\system32\sesinetd.exe