iLok machine activation blown out (also Waves, but fixed that)

[Starship Krupa]

5 hours ago, abacab said:

That bit only works if you can log on and perform the iLok activations from the currently activated machine. If the machine ID with the activations is inaccessible (crashed, lost, stolen, upgraded or anything that could have changed the internal machine ID) for any reason, you cannot do it remotely.

Actually, no, I did initiate the reset request from my other computer. And it worked, for a little over half of the manufacturers. So the ailing system can be completely gone when you issue your reset request. Just go to a computer with iLok Manager on it, log in, and your dead system will show up with its location ID and all locally-stored licenses listed.

Aaaaand, it looks like my 2nd email did the trick, I have my Exponential licenses back.

The only remaining straggler is Pulsar Audio, whose Smasher compressor I have a license for, and which I never use.

Edited May 18, 2022 by Starship Krupa

[abacab]

19 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Actually, no, I did initiate the reset request from my other computer.

Does that work even if you do not pay for "zero downtime"?

[lawajava]

5 hours ago, abacab said:

Well if you have zero downtime with theft and loss coverage AND a spare iLok dongle, you get temporary licenses to use while you RMA the broken dongle.

Details in the terms link in the post above yours.

I had that happen. As I had Zero Downtime and a spare new iLok dongle in a drawer I was back up and running right away. A week or so later I received another new blank iLok dongle in the mail from PACE. Which I put in the drawer in case  I ever have an incident with my now current dongle.

[mibby]

This thread has my stomach in knots.  I really hate the idea of paying a 3rd party (iLok) a ransom to get the licenses that I bought back...

[Heath Row]

1 hour ago, mibby said:

This thread has my stomach in knots.  I really hate the idea of paying a 3rd party (iLok) a ransom to get the licenses that I bought back...

I was feeling a little that way myself, after purchasing ZDT yesterday I feel much better, I have a spare brand spanking new gen3 iLok in my draw, ready to go.

[Fleer]

7 hours ago, heath row said:

I was feeling a little that way myself, after purchasing ZDT yesterday I feel much better, I have a spare brand spanking new gen3 iLok in my draw, ready to go.

Then again …

[abacab]

13 hours ago, lawajava said:

As I had Zero Downtime and a spare new iLok dongle in a drawer I was back up and running right away. A week or so later I received another new blank iLok dongle in the mail from PACE. Which I put in the drawer in case  I ever have an incident with my now current dongle.

It appears that according to the iLok terms, you need to activate Zero Downtime on the spare dongle, as the ZD you had was only specific to the original dongle. So it's $30 each...

[Starship Krupa]

8 hours ago, abacab said:

Does that work even if you do not pay for "zero downtime"?

It "works" inasmuch as iLok Manager let me issue the request, and afterward indicated that I'd made the request, and then 6 out of 9 manufacturers reset the licenses without further communication. I had to contact another 2 myself to get them to reset the licenses. The remaining one, Pulsar, hasn't reset my license, but it's for Smasher, a compressor I seldom if ever use. I'll send them email just for form's sake to get the last license out of iLimbo. This suggests that there are some holes in the system regarding the companies receiving the requests. Maybe a group of email messages like that triggered junk mail filters? Who knows. I didn't completely trust it, and I was right in that.

It reinforces the strategy of having a physical iLok for my main system, as its iLok just sits there always plugged into a port that's out of harm's way. If I had been getting ready to take a trip with the laptop, I could have just pulled the iLok from that main system and been good to go.

Since I'm not making music on deadlines or making money from it, having one system's licenses offline for 24 hours was no big deal and I don't feel any urge to fork over for ZDT. My setup has sufficient redundancy (with the physical iLok) that I had zero downtime as it was.

So my advice to anyone who's storing licenses locally: that's feasible for a #2 workstation if you have a physical iLok on your main system (or the other way around) with a set of licenses. I find it hard to imagine that if a person has 2 workstations, the main one will have all of the licenses that the #2 one has. At this point, if I had only one single DAW computer, I'd not want to store iLok licenses locally unless they were for software I'd be okay without using for a day. Thing is, though, some of my most-used instruments and FX are iLok'd and I'd not want to be without them if I could avoid it. A one-time fee of $35-40 for a physical iLok seems like good (and plenty) insurance for 28 activations. If my physical iLok went to computer peripheral heaven, then I'd still have a full set of licenses stored locally on my #2 system and could move them to the main one if need be.

Figure that in the case of a calamity sufficient to break both my dongle and my laptop, I'll be seeing to more urgent matters than having to wait overnight to get access to my plug-ins.

I'll suggest learning the process for contacting companies for resets. In a nutshell, they need your iLok ID, the email address you use with the iLok ID, the location ID of the downed system, and the titles and activation codes for the plug-ins that are stuck in iLimbo. It's not obvious, but you can copy and paste the location ID and the activation codes from iLok Manager. Just click on the field and it becomes highlighted with a thin rectangle around it. Then use Ctrl-C to copy. So it's easy enough to do, although it would get tedious with more than about a dozen licenses.

iLok sends you a notification via email every time a company fulfills a reset request. That's how I was able to report on the progress throughout the episode.

For those who found my tale scary, remember: from a location that iLok has deemed lost forever, I had all but the iZotope/Exponential ones back online overnight. Even if I hadn't had the physical iLok, I'd have been back up and running without much downtime, and I didn't permanently lose any of my licenses. I suffered no downtime whatsoever, as I still had a full set of licenses on the dongle. And the full recovery didn't cost me a dime. My only beef toward PACE (and Waves) about any of this is that it's stupid to have a system that can maroon a license location just because I temporarily disable two pieces of hardware. At worst, they should have recognized the location as soon as I re-enabled the adapters and restarted the computer. Fortunately, Waves have a fairly simple solution for it.

[abacab]

18 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

It "works" inasmuch as iLok Manager let me issue the request, and afterward indicated that I'd made the request, and then 6 out of 9 manufacturers reset the licenses without further communication. 

Aha! That must be new. I don't think that was available a couple years ago when I needed to reset them all. I had to contact everyone myself.

[Fleer]

Yep, comes with iLok Manager 5.5 or higher. 

[abacab]

57 minutes ago, Fleer said:

Yep, comes with iLok Manager 5.5 or higher. 

Aha! I was still on 5.4.x.

Just updated to 5.5.1!

• Added Ability to report an offline machine as unusable via Machine Details view or the context menu. Users can now initiate the Machine Reset process themselves, without needing to start a support ticket with a publisher.

[Starship Krupa]

13 hours ago, abacab said:

Users can now initiate the Machine Reset process themselves, without needing to start a support ticket with a publisher.

Of course as we saw with my recent experience, actually getting your licenses reset may still require opening a support ticket with the publisher.