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[dhiggins]

I've had this happen three times now. Any ideas why.

I've got MC17 running on a server machine as a service, serving up my media library to a workstation and a TIVO.

No problems there.

However, three times now, the server instance of MC17 will just "not be available". I suddenly can't access it from either my workstation or Tivo.

In each instance, when I get on my server and start digging around, I discover that MC17 has become "unregistered". So what happens is, when the server boots up (I rarely turn it off), MC17 tries to load as a service (I use FireDeamon) it ends up popping up a prompt about being unregistered and do I want to register it.

Of course, it's being run as a service, so there's no way I'm going to see that without some poking around.

So, I stop the service, run normal, request the registration through the website, install the new reg code and presto, everything's back to working right.

So my question is, why on earth does the dang thing keep coming unregistered?

This is a server machine, so no one's actually "on" it. I connect to it to store files, but that's about it.

Everytime this happens, it's when I've had to shut the server down and start it back up. It's almost like if MC runs for a LONG time, it does something that deletes it's registration info for some reason.

Any ideas?

[Matt]

This isn't a common issue.

My only thought is that changing the computer name or date might do this.

[Scolex]

Have ever rebooted the server right after installing the registration key. If no I wonder if for some reason the license is getting lost at some point due to the lack of a restart. I wouldn't think this would be needed but you never know bits can be pretty flaky.

[dhiggins]

Hmm, interesting, no, i've never installed the reg key and THEN restarted the machine.

When this has happened before, I have to

1) stop the service
2) Run MC17 normally, it prompts again about the reg
3) restore the reg from internet
4), close MC
5) start the service, everything is good

and at that point, I usually just get off the machine and leave it running.

I don't restart the machine, but I DO restart MC.

As far as machine name and such goes, no that doesn't get changed. I set that all up when I built up this server. Haven't really done much to it since.

Hmmm, the date might change automatically when Daylight savings kicks in. And I know MC was running continuously during that time.

Could that screw it up?

[dhiggins]

The only thing that does seem consistent is that the reg info is lost when I bring up the machine after it's been turned off, after it's been left on for LONG periods of time.

For instance, that last time I turned it off was about a week ago.
When I brought it back up, MC had lost it's reg info.

Before that, the machine (with MC running) had been up for months. But way back when I had powered it down, when I brought it up, MC had also lost it's reg.

[dhiggins]

I'm going to try just cycling it now, and seeing what happens....

[JimH]

Double check that the date is correct.

[dhiggins]

Well, rebooted, the date is spot on (i have it set to auto sync via a time server anyway).

And MC came up as a service just fine this time.

Could it be that "automatic" upgrade stuff that sometimes happens? I'm running it as a service with the /MediaServer switch. Surely it wouldn't try to perform an upgrade with that switch set right?

[Scolex]

One way to find out if it is happening when there is an update to make note of what version you currently have (help>about) and if it becomes unregistered again you can check it. My understanding is that MC would function as normal other than you don't have to be logged in for media server functionality because you are running it as a service.

[Matt]

I'm not sure what auto-update will do when running as a service.  Since there's no UAC, I would expect it to just work but it's not been tested here because running as a service isn't officially supported.

You could also just turn off the auto-update for a month and see what happens.

[dhiggins]

Well, just checked. I do have autoupdate turned off on the server, and it hasn't been updated since 11/11/11 (it's still at 17.0.33).

So it doesn't look like auto updates is the culprit.

[JimH]

It might be good to update.

[dhiggins]

Yeah, I'll probably go ahead and do that, but I've had this exact same problem twice before.

Hmm, looks like both times were AFTER 11/11/11 though.

Maybe it is something with that particular version....

Well, I'll update it and see how things go.