Topic: License - losing it when changing user name (Read 3290 times)

Mastiff · « **on:** November 02, 2004, 10:33:58 am »

I bought a computer for the kitchen (after I got an expensive, very good LCD 19" monitor very cheap my wife gave in...), and it has almost the same chipset family as my HTPC (965 vs. 975), so I simply took one of the HT images and restored that to the kitchen pc. But you can't have a kitchen PC where the user name is "Cinema Inferno", so I changed it. And got bombed out of MC with a message that the trial period was out.

Trying to restore the lisence didn't help at all, it couldn't find the correct registry entries. Going back to the original user name didn't help either. So I have removes MC totally, deleted that user, created a new user and installed from scratch. Still same problem.

I could install 11 and restore the lisence for that without any problems, and I sort of hope that it's stable enough so that it doesn't crash on my wife. Believe me, one BSOD on mrs. Mastiff, and I'll be back in the stoneage again, with a regular TV on the kitchen instead of a computer...

The PC is a m-ATX motherboard with a celeron 2.8, 256 meg 400 mHz DDR RAM, a very quiet PSU and CPU cooler, 80 gig harddisk in a Quiet PC enclosure, so it won't be audible in the cupboard, and it won't be visible either. It will never be off, I'll use STR for it.

Any advice?

John Gateley · « **Reply #1 on:** November 02, 2004, 10:37:46 am »

I'm confused: doing a clean install, and then a restore doesn't work?

j

Mastiff · « **Reply #2 on:** November 02, 2004, 03:08:52 pm »

Sorry, my bad. I was a bit ambiguous on that one I see. I created a new user and installed MC from scratch, not Windows. It will still remember the 30 day period and a lot of other things, it seems. Of course allowing a totally clean removal will create a clan of people installing and removing every 30 days, so I understand why that's not possible.

John Gateley · « **Reply #3 on:** November 02, 2004, 03:17:44 pm »

But if you do a restore on that machine, does the license get installed?

j

Mastiff · « **Reply #4 on:** November 02, 2004, 04:07:07 pm »

Nope. I tried now for the third or fourth time to check the error message, and it says "Information" in the window heading, and then "Error restoring Media Center License: BB Initialization failure." This is with the latest MC10 version.

JimH · « **Reply #5 on:** November 02, 2004, 04:09:24 pm »

Firewall screwed down too tight?

Mastiff · « **Reply #6 on:** November 02, 2004, 04:11:02 pm »

Aha. So it has to connect to the "mothership"! That may be it, yes. I have firewalls coming out of my a...

Mastiff · « **Reply #7 on:** November 02, 2004, 04:14:00 pm »

Nope, that's not it. Deactivating the firewall gives me the same error message.

Edit: And Internet's working on the computer - I'm reading about Republican activists complaining about voting machines in Philly.

Edit 2: Forgot to say that this is restoring from file. Is it worth a shot trying to restore from the Net?

JimH · « **Reply #8 on:** November 02, 2004, 04:21:34 pm »

www.mediajukebox.com/license tells you everything you need to know (normally).

Use your Registration Code and visit the restore page. The Install Key you get only lasts 14 days.

If you still have problems, did you install SP2? If so, did you have any spyware programs installed at the time?

John Gateley · « **Reply #9 on:** November 02, 2004, 04:23:20 pm »

Hi Mastiff,

Remove MC10, find files named mjextman.exe and remove them (there should be one in a windows system directory), then reinstall and try again.

j

Mastiff · « **Reply #10 on:** November 02, 2004, 04:40:23 pm »

Jim, no SP2 here. Won't be for a long time. I'm rather paranoid... I will try to do an Internet resteore when I have restored the image I made before I started messing with this - too much install, uninstall and reinstall to my liking here.

John, that didn't help either. No mjextman, and I even removed all the JRiver keys in XP's registry, Local machine/Software, but no go.

Still I can't understand why changing the user name on the main account will invalidate the lisence.

Mastiff · « **Reply #11 on:** November 03, 2004, 05:52:46 am »

I finally found it! It wasn't the user name, it was the changing the computer name/network ID that did it. I changed that from "Kino" ((home) theater) to "Kjøkkenmaskin" (Kitchen computer, but it's a norwegian pun because it also means food processor!). When I instead changed to "Kjokkenmaskin", without the norwegian letter "ø", it still lost the lisence, but this time I was able to restore it from file.

So it seems Buy Button is unable to cope with that precise procedure. Hardly a showstopper bug, huh? My guess is that you could put an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of computers, and they still wouldn't see that problem even if they messed around in an infinite period of time!

But of course it only took one Mastiff a short while to find it...

JimH · « **Reply #12 on:** November 03, 2004, 07:06:35 am »

Mastiff,
Thanks for reporting the solution. We'll take a look at it.

Jim

Mastiff · « **Reply #13 on:** November 03, 2004, 07:12:37 am »

It's gotta be one of the more obscure bugs you have seen, right?

Btw is there a difference in the process when restoring lisences from the Net and from a feil? In other words is it worth a shot trying that kind of restore?

JimH · « **Reply #14 on:** November 03, 2004, 07:16:51 am »

Doubtful. When you need to license MC, it's best to use the Install Key if it's less than two weeks old. It doesn't use one of your 10 annual restores. After two weeks, you must use your Registration Code to restore.

For anyone else trying to understand this, please see the FAQ here:

www.mediajukebox.com/license

JohnT · « **Reply #15 on:** November 04, 2004, 01:37:59 pm »

Please try the next build (something greater than 11.0.117). It should fix the problem with restoring a license on a computer named with international characters.

Mastiff · « **Reply #16 on:** November 04, 2004, 03:56:58 pm »

OK, I'll test it. Thanks! Any chance of that fix appearing on an MC 10 version? I don't dare using the beta for now in the kitchen, one bluescreen or other type of crash, and mrs. Mastiff's gonna have my butt for supper!

Cyberfrog · « **Reply #17 on:** November 16, 2004, 06:17:57 am »

Mastiff you are my hero.

I was looking for that solution since one year.
My computer name was PC_Büro and I never got that license installed. I changed that name and everything is working fine. Thanks a lot.

JohnT · « **Reply #18 on:** November 16, 2004, 09:01:36 am »

The fix will be in the next version 10 build as well (any build number greater than 10.0.173).

Mastiff · « **Reply #19 on:** November 16, 2004, 10:52:19 am »

You're welcome, Cyberfrog. Pretty soon you'll be able to get back to the PC's real name again, then. And thank John, he made the fix, I just found the specific problem.

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Author Topic: License - losing it when changing user name (Read 3290 times)