I can't seem to fix this problem which for some reason has just started to occur, and my assignment is due in a week and a half!

I am using the non-commercial version of Houdini 7.0.231 and it has been working perfectly fine for the months that I have been using it. I have renewed the non commercial licenses a number of times with no hassles or problems whatsoever.

Now this morning as I started up Houdini Master (as I usually do) it once again came up with the License Administrator asking if I wanted to renew the license or modify the licensing settings.

I clicked on “install a non-commercial license” as usual. Clicked accept in the EULA and it comes up with the message “The non commercial licenses were successfully installed.” and it gave me the usual options of either running Houdini Master, View Licenses, or Close. I click on “Run Houdini Master”, it begins to startup and then goes to the License Administrator again!! I have done this a number of times, and it keeps saying I have to renew my licenses.

I have looked at the licenses and they expire June 14 2005. So I understand that I need new licenses, but the administrator says they were installed successfully, but the expiry date never changes, and now I cannot open my project at all!

Is the Houdini License Server down and that's why it's not updating my licenses? Or is there a simple work around or something? This is really urgent, I have quite a lot of work to do and I must have it finished by June 26! And now with Houdini out of commission I can't do anything with the project at all!

Please please please help!

I've tried to be as descriptive as possible, but if there is any further information needed, please don't hesitate to ask.

I anxiously await someone's reply.

Okay……it seems to have fixed….

I just tried it again and the licenses renewed properly and Houdini ran fine….

I guess the problem must've been on SideFX's side then and not mine.

If you search on here, I remember someone saying that there's a time zone problem with the apprentice licensing. The license expires midnight local time on your machine, but the license database only gives out a new license local time on the server's machine. So if your time zone's midnight is ahead of the server's, it will keep giving you the old license until it catches up with the server's midnight in its time zone.

Which time zone are you in? I think the license database server runs on GMT-5.

GMT + 10.

Hmm..that may be right…because my license worked around 3pm…which is exactly 15 hours, so yeah, that must be it.

Thanks for clearing that up for future reference.

it might be a good idea to add this and other secret info to a licensing FAQ and make it a pinned topic here….

We now allow apprentice licenses to be reactivated a day before they expire, so the time zone problems are hopefully fixed. Please let us know if there are more problems.