Alas, I am still having problems.

I uninstalled H11, deleted the CWindows/keys directory, downloaded H 11.0.446.9 and reinstalled.

Upon running it, I still get the:

“ERROR: Key installation failed for LenovoLaptop
Please ensure that the server code and signature of the SERVER key for LenovoLaptop are correct”

Any ideas?

I don't think I have had this many problems getting Houdini to run since H5…

Thanks,
Craig

Oh- and by the way, hserver and sesinetd don't seem to be running at all on my PC when checking the Task Manager…

Thanks for any help,
Craig

Yeah pretty much having the same problems myself still and its now extended to the h10 aswell for me. Cant get either of them working with the same ‘Key installation failed’ error. Tried reinstalls of both, cleared registry entries, deleted the keys folder etc but still doesnt work.
Any help would be appreciated and thanks for your time .

Cheers
Azhul

Hi Azhul and Craig,

if you have no hserver & sesinetd running, it's not a problem yet, that means only you have chosen Apprentice Licencing during installation. In that case
C:\WINDOWS\keys\licenses is the place where you (better hkey should) save your licence information. Go to http://license.sidefx.com/get_nc_license.php [license.sidefx.com] , run hkey.exe and enter the server name and its server code you find on the server information tab into the web form. Choosing Houdini master should give you three lines, which you copy into the licences file, save it and it should be ok.

If you also feel the need to use Houdini Escape repeat the steps and now it's sufficient to choose only the LICENSE Generic Houdini-Escape-NonCommercial and add this to your licence file.

In case you opt for Licence server use File->Manually Enter Keys… and copy each key
- SERVER
- LICENSE Generic Houdini-Master-NonCommercial
- LICENSE Generic Render-NonCommercial
- LICENSE Generic Houdini-Escape-NonCommercial if needed at all

to the input fields and that should be it.

That is how I got my H11 running.

For some reason the “License server code”, whether obtained from the Houdini License Adminstrator “Server Information” tab or from using “sesictrl -n” (and both are different!) don't seem to generate a SERVER key from this page:

http://license.sidefx.com/get_nc_license.php [license.sidefx.com]

that works when I do “Manually Enter Keys..” in the Houdini License Administrator.

Do I need to manually edit the Licenses file? (For some reason I can't seem to override the permissions like I normally do to allow myself to edit it, but that is some Win7 thing I am trying to figure out…)

Thanks,
Craig

Hey again,

Thanks WhoDjini for your help and itango2 aswell for his earlier post. Have now finally got it working
Have to say, as Craig mentioned this error was continuing to occur till i managed to paste the generated keys manually in the licenses file. This however gave a seg fault error which was fixed by changing the compatibility mode to vista service pack 2 as mentioned in a previous post.
Also a friend of mine who had the same issues got it working just by changing the compatibility settings so just doing that might work aswell
Hope this helps. Now to finally try out the new version

cheers
Azhul

I've found that if you are using a laptop and only on wifi when trying to install licenses/get server keys or whatnot it generally doesn't work and you have to plug in an ethernet cable so it attempts to license using the physical network as opposed to the wifi one. After it does that it's not a problem going back to wifi only.

Hey, I tried using my physical connection instead of wifi but cant make it work… I follow up all the instructions, but it seems that there's no reply from Ubuntu Server…

For me the “physical network” workaround does not work. Every time when I open the License Administrator it changes my “License server code” so it always says the the current installed one is invalid. The Houdini version is 11.0.460 on Win Vista 32.
(I have deleted my C:\windows\keys\licenses.local file on purpose, so this is not the problem)

thanks
Chris

Chris,

just out of curiosity. How is your network setup, do you have a “fixed” IP for your machine?? Or is your Ethernet Address (MAC) changing ??

I am asking, because node locked licences usually use some sort of hash on IP and/or MAC to generate a “valid” licence key.

Ok, I had some major licensing problems with Apprentice HD as well, but it seems I finally got it working. Here's what I ended up doing (not sure if all parts are relevant or if I just got lucky). My configuration is a Windows 7 64-bit over wifi. Hopefully this will help someone (or me, if I ever need to repeat this).

First of all, to avoid constant crashing with hkey.exe and sesinetd.exe, I changed both their compatibility settings to Windows Vista SP2.

The problem is that the license manager refused to install the SERVER key, and the server code kept changing every now and then. Plugging to a physical network didn't help. The HD licenses themselves installed nicely.

I decided to try and ditch the server stuff and go with local licensing instead following http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1283&Itemid=9 [sidefx.com] … For whatever reason, the license manager could not access the file C:\windows\keys\license.local so I also switched the directory for the license file. Thus I added the following lines to $HFS\houdini\Licensing.opt:

licensingMode = localValidator
localValidatorDir = C:\Users\miika

Finally I got three greens and OK in the License Administrator (I may or may not have reinstalled the licenses at this point). When running Houdini after this, it demands to obtain Apprentice licenses on startup and actually runs (in HD mode) if I do it. However, it wants to do this on every startup, which is quite annoying… This problem was also magically solved by setting the compatibility mode for hmaster.exe to Vista SP2.

Likewise, mplay also failed to start up until I changed its compatibility settings. I guess that should be done for just about evey .exe file then…

So… hopefully these problems will be properly fixed at some point, but this seems to be working at least so far.

You can add me to the list of Windows 7 64bit laptop wifi'ers that can't get 11 to install. After my version 11 installation attempt and fail, version 10 no longer launched either, requiring a total strip down and re-installation of version 10.

Make sure you are using “Stand Alone Licensing” in the license administrator (hkey).

Laptops are notorious for initializing network devices in different random order each time you reboot and since the server key binds to a MAC address of one of your network devices, well, you see the problem. All in a stupid race to see if some laptop can boot 1 second faster than the other to get some PC Magazine Boot Time award. :roll:

Stand alone licensing can help or see if you can tune the bios to some slow boot mode that forces the network devices to initialize in the same order each time.

Hi,
on my laptop the “server code” changes every time I restart the “License Administrator” (without any reboot, restart or standby wakeup). Just a new start of the program returns a new server code.

@WhoDjini thanks for the answer - there is nothing special in my network configuration just a “simple” acer laptop. The MAC adresses are always the same - one for the cable bound LAN and one for the wifi network.

I tried also to change the location of the licenses.local file without any effect.

cheers
Chris

Is the problem really with laptops or Win7, etc?

It seems to me that h10 worked for all of us without all of these problems, so something must've changed in H11 that is causing it to choke under certain circumstances.

Would it be possible to just get the H11 licensing to work like H10's did?

(Still don't have it working here after MANY tries of all of the suggestions I found, but am on vacation and gave up for now..)

Thanks,
Craig

add me to the list of people that can't install Houdini 11.

First: when I attempted to install an apprentice licence during installation it gave me a fatal error.

Then I tried to get a Houdini License.

When I try to enter the server key, I'm getting the following error:

Key 1:
ERROR: Key installation failed for Allegro-VAIO
Please ensure that the server code and signature of the SERVER key for ALLEGRO-VAIO are correct.

I've had an odd time of it, for sure! I'm actually a desktop user that purchased Apprentice HD. When I installed, however, I chose the free licensing version for 11. So, I had to retrieve my purchased, non-commercial license. These showed they were for version 10, though downloads aways take you to 11.

Well, I then noticed their was a menu option to “Upgrade to Apprentice HD”, which I thought was odd, since I had the Apprentice HD license. I then noticed that I didn't have access to the advertised Torque exporter(s). This lead me to believe that I was not running under the proper license… that the software/licensing was confused. So I was going to attempt to resend non-purchansed version 11 licenses, but you can't do that with free non-commercial licenses. So, I deleted the licensing info and reinstalled, then retrieved by purchased licenses. I then switched over to local licensing since Im a Apprentice HD user. The end result is, Houdini keeps complaining about licensing, even though administrator is happy with everything. Note that I did try the server method first, which also didn't work, prior to changing the licensing method to local. I haven't yet seen a way to try version 10, because all current download paths take you to 11.0.446.9. If I want to keeep working, it lliks like Id have to get the free non-commercial license(s) and be back where I started… appearing to really not be running Apprentice HD.

for what it's worth, I'm getting the same problem with H10

And, now something must be messed up with 10 for Win32, because that's the version I finally found and download, but reports that I'm trying to install a 64-bit app on a 32 bit OS… GO FIGURE!

Hi,
in Version 11.0.469 all my license problems are gone

br.
Chris