Serial Number In Use Problem?

[jssarch]

I am a long time Vectorworks/macOSX user, but I have just started working on a Vista Home Premium platform with VW2008.

For about two weeks the program worked fine, but it was sluggish. Our office IT support changed the program to work in an XP compatibility mode and that solved the sluggishness. He also upgraded the VW2008 with a service pack.

Since then I have been getting booted out of vectorworks with an error saying the serial number is in use. My desktop is the only machine that has vectorworks installed.

Has anyone else experienced this problem? Does anyone know of the fix? Is this problem related to the service pack, compatibility fix, or Vista?

[Ray Libby]

I would make sure you are updated to the latest service pack. You may want to try right clicking on VectorWorks2008.exe in the root VectorWorks folder, choose properties, Compatibility tab and check Run this program as an administrator.

[Guest Lyndsey]

There should be a button offering you more information, have you clicked it?

There you can find the IP address (the network address) and user name that the "other" copy of VectorWorks is using. If the IP address is the same as your machine then there is a problem, otherwise, someone else "may" be using it.

If you don't know how to get your IP address, I'm sure your IT support technician can help.

[jssarch]

I checked the IP address and it wasn't an address attached to our router. Our IT support just checked the reported IP address and he says it is from a system in Tampa possibly Verizon (our isp)?

I am running VW2008 SP2 Build 83388

[Guest Lyndsey]

When you got the IP address, did it list the user name? If it was your name, there may be an issue with how VectorWorks runs in this XP compatibility mode that causes it to consider the IP address different from your own.

If it was a different name, it could be that someone has the same serial number -- which should not happen if it was purchased from Nemetschek North America.

At this point, I think it would be useful for you to call our Technical Support.

[jssarch]

The user name is our name. I have been in touch with tech support, and in addition I thought there might be good input from the techboard. We're all looking forward to understanding this one! Switch operating systems might be best.

[jssarch]

Hi,

Many thanks to the vectorworks tech team who identified this problem as coming from two competing internet connections (wireless usb and NIC). Once the NIC was disabled the error was no longer generated. At least this is my understanding of the problem and solution!

[Ray Libby]

Interesting, so VW was sending out the serial # over one connection and reading the same serial # over the other, thinking it was a different machine?

[Guest jkelly]

It seems that way (I was sitting there with Juan helping him troubleshoot your issue).

This doesn't happen on all machines running two NICs though, so it is definitely an odd issue.

If anyone else comes across this thread with the same issue, feel free to append a basic description of your hardware configuration and what OS you are using, so we can try and find a pattern. Also, obviously mention whether the turning off the second interface trick works.