I have installed Houdini 6.1 Apprentice edition on several W2K (SP3) machines and found that if I update the Houdini at the time between 00:00 and 13:00 of the day just after the expiry date, I will not be able to renew the license successful. I have checked that the time zone of Houdini site and my place different by 13 hours, I think that could be the reason why I cannot get the license.

Any ideas(except from Wait, wait, wait?c) to fix it?
Is it a bug of Houdini licensing programming?
Is it just the problem of the Non-Commerical Edition, not the commercial edition? Thanks.

MingYung

Hmmm… interesting. I think you're onto something here. The Apprentice license server probably thinks that your license is still valid, due to the time difference, hence you can't renew. However, I think it's good to have some personal time back rather than using Houdini all the time.

IMHO, it's a small inconvenience, not a problem. If you own the commercial edition, you will be sent a license before it expires.

Cheers!
steven

It is a problem because we are teaching Houdini and some of our machines will not be available in the class at the day after expiry date :cry:

there is a page where you can manually request a license key, i needed to use it when i couldnt get the internet connection working at home for a while. i dont have the link but i found it by searching this forum. hope that helps.

I know the link for manually aquire the license is:

http://license.sidefx.com/get_nc_license.php [license.sidefx.com]

However, I found that the license server database “remember” the license date and e.g. One of my Houdini license will expire at Mar 5. I tries to manually get the license and it will generate the same license key (i.e. same expiry date (Mar 5) ), so I think it will have no differences of manually or automatically aquire the license when considering my case.

The problem is:
e.g. When the license expiry date is Feb 10, I cannot get the license from Feb 11, 00:00 to 13:00 (local time) because in this period, though my local time is Feb 11, the time from Houdini's site (Toronto) is still Feb 10. I wonder if their programmers had not consider the time zone difference for License renewal.

Hi Ming Yung,

If you're teaching Houdini in a school, then I would strongly encourage you to contact SESI about getting educational licenses. This way you won't have to worry about Apprentice licenses expiring.

Cheers!
steven