I've had Houdini 9.0 running on my machine great for months now.

Today, I downloaded the windows 32-bit build of 9.1 (9.1.124) and got it installed. However, as soon as I run Houdini I got an error message pop up saying “License Error: Unable to connect to hserver for license acquisition”.

If I load up the License Administrator I get 2 large red circles telling me the Server isn't running and that I have an invalid server key.

I tried running my old 9.0.782 build, but now that doesn't work either, and gives the same error. I've tried uninstalling 9.1, reinstalling 9.0.782… still nothing.

The only other thing I've done today is uninstall my graphics card drivers, and install older drivers (since the latest nVidia drivers play havok with Maya, making the program unusable)… but I'd be surprised if that would mess up the license server.

Anyway, here are my diagnostics (minus the license keys at the bottom of the diagnostics, since I don't want to post them on the internet). Please note, I currently have just 9.0.782 installed:

Diagnostic Output:
==================
If you are having licensing problems, please save this information and email it
to support@sidefx.com.

License Administrator output:
=============================
Generated on: Sat Feb 02 00:48:35 2008
Local host name: MYMACHINE
Local server code: 38163af1
Local ip address: 127.0.0.1
Number of servers: 1
License server name: mymachine(mymachine)
Server ip address: 127.0.0.1
License server is running: No
License Administrator version: 9.0.782
Http proxy host: (none)
Using standalone mode: Yes
Can retrieve http://license.sidefx.com/index.php: [license.sidefx.com] Yes

Installed licenses:
LicID Platform Product Ver Avail Expiry
—– ——– ——- — —– ——


sesictrl -i output:
===================
Cannot connect to server mymachine (127.0.0.1)- verify that sesinetd is running.



hserver -l output:
==================



—-

I also tried changing the license administrator to standalone mode (as can be seen in the diagnostics), but that didn't make any difference either.

Any ideas?
Paddington

Are you running a 32-bit Houdini on a 64-bit Windows install?

What the license diagnostic is telling me is that the license server (sesinetd) isn't running. Can you reboot to see if it's simply a matter of restarting it? (Alternately, if you know what this means and feel comfortable with it, you can explicitly restart the sesinetd service.)

Yeah, I am running 32bit on XP64. The reason for that is when I first got Houdini 9.0 up and running on this machine, the 64-bit version was painfully slow compared to the 32-bit version - I don't know if that was a bug that has since been fixed, but running the 32-bit version hasn't been a problem until now.

As for explicitly restarting the sesinetd service…. I'm fairly comfortanble with computers, but I don't know how to restart that service… if it's not too much trouble, could you briefly explain the steps I'd need to take please?

Cheers,
Paddington.

Update: Been looking through the services manager etc. and sesinetd isn't even listed. How can I add this service? Why would it have suddenly dissapeared, when it must have been working a few days ago?

Update:

I've found the 2 services listed (HoudiniLicenseServe and HoudiniServer). However, neither have started, and when I right click on them and try to tell them to start, I get the following error:

“Could not start the HoudiniLicenseServer service on Local Computer
Error 2: The system cannot find the file specified”

So… I brought up the properties to try and see why they weren't running. The path windows was looking in was C:\WINDOWS\system32. However, both .exes had installed to C:\WINDOWS\SysWOW64. I copied over the 2 exes (and a text file also named hserver) to the system32 directory, and can now get the services to start.

Houdini now loads!!! Sweeeeeeeeeeeeet

Thanks for your help Joe, I'd have never looked into services etc. if it wasn't for your advice

Cheers,
One mega-happy Houdini user who can now get back to work