Installing Vectorworks in student environment

[QMUC]

Hi there,

This is my first post and I am not familiar with Vectorworks, also it's quite an indepth question so I apologise in advance for the length.

I work as an I.T. Officer for an educational establishment. We have a standard Windows build which includes all the software the students require in order to complete their course - this obviously changes from campus to campus to account for the different types of package required. We also use a Mandatory profile as opposed to roaming profiles, it eliminates corrupt profiles and associated problems - this mandatory profile does not save any of the changes that the user makes. Due to the use of the mandatory profile certain pieces of software require registry fixes which are applied when the user logs on in order for the software to work - usually product keys or preferences.

I have been tasked with setting up a Windows 2000 standard build for the Design Studio of our Drama department - they use Vectorworks to assist in the design of the stage lighting etc.

They have recently obtained a 10 user educational version of Vectorworks 10 which needs to be incorporated in the build. I am at the testing stage at present, making sure the program runs properly and doesn't interfere or have any other consequences for the rest of the software on the PCs. I can get the program to work without much trouble, however the problem begins when a student user (using the Mandatory Profile) logs on and attempts to run the software, it asks for a product key. Normally I would extract the information from the registry regarding the Registration of the product, and create a batch file or wscript to insert that information for the logged on user prior to actually running the program. The registration key for each machine would obviously be different, I understand the licence is only valid for a single installation on a single machine, and we have 10 different licence codes, one for each installation.

Having determined where the registration key and preferences are stored in the registry (HKCU) I extracted the key and created a batch file to insert the data when Vectorworks was run - however this didn't work. It appears that the program first checks the HKU for the logged on user, therefore if they have never logged on before they will be required to enter the Licence code - obviously with the mandatory profile it wouldn't matter if a student had or had not logged on that machine before, it would appear as if they hadn't to the software - there is no way that I'm aware of to be able to enter registry code to this key using a variable which would pick up the users ID.

I don't want to leave a copy of the licence code in a text file for the student to enter themselves, there's too much danger of that code getting into the wrong hands.

So, what I'm looking for is a way to get the software to recognise that the licence code has already been entered, as it already resides in several different places in the registry. The aim is for the students to be able to run the software so that it appears to be running normally, without them having to enter the code every time they log on and run the software.

I don't want to go into any more details as to where in the registry the information is kept at present, but I would appreciate any help at all in this.

For those of you that have read this far, thanks for your patience.

Many Thanks,

QMUC

[QMUC]

Thanks for all the help so far folks, keep the ideas coming !

I realised I made a slight mistake in the last post regarding the location of registration information, I erroneously stated that there was reference to this in the HKCU key, it isn't, it's actually in HKLM - not that it makes that much difference to the problem.

Does anybody have an idea on how to get around the problem?

Any help at all will be most gratefully received, I've had zero response so far....

Regards,

QMUC

[jan15]

Sorry, QM, but we're mostly designers reading these forums, not IT people. I couldn't understand your original post.

Have you tried calling tech support? I haven't called in a long time, but when I did they very good at that.

[Guest]

You need to give the user accounts either administrative or power user authority.

I know this is not feasible in some educational settings.

To work around it, the user's need read/write access to the following registry keys:

HKEY CURRENT USER>Software>Nemetschek,

HKEY LOCAL MACHINE>Software>Nemetschek and

HKEY USER>#>Software>Nemetschek

In HKEY User, you'll need to look in the directory for one of the long numbers that has software>Nemetschek. This is a different number on each computer.

After that, the user will be able to use VW freely without the serial number bob popping up.

[QMUC]

Hi there, thanks for the replies.

Katie, you're on the button, but I did it a slightly different way. To avoid giving the users read/write access to the registry keys I extracted the registry key for HKLM and amended it so it would write to HKCU (I discovered that essentially when the user logs on the HKU key links up with the HKCU key, so the registration information doesn't actually need to be in the HKU key at all.), and applied this registry fix using a batch file so that every time just before the software is run the information is written to the registry and the users will not notice any problems. I'm looking at maybe using wscript to tidy things up as opposed to a batch file. The HKU key not only is different for every computer, it's different for every user, increasing by 1 increment for the next user to log on (I think).

In addition to the registration key I discovered you need the preferences information as well, otherwise a Quicktime error is generated, haven't investigated this fully as it works when the preferences are inputted via the registry to the HKCU key.

Many thanks for your help, it's only easy when you know how.

QMUC