I recently migrated from XP 32 to Vista 64 and when doing so I transfered my 2009 Design license to my laptop.
When installing 3ds on Vista afterwards I attempted to transfer the license there, but even though at first it seemed to work,
the license transfer utility showed the license as “broken” and wants me to transfer the license again but now it doesn’t work on either machine. I tried saving out the transfer file again from the laptop but it just says the license has already been imported.
Anyone got any hints to what I should do? Even if I were to reactivate Max, the same thing might just happen again.

I don’t even bother trying the transfer license thing anymore. I’ve had so many problems I just count on calling every time I need to register after the initial registration.

It doesn’t look like I can activate it. When I try it tells me the license can’t be modified. Even though it’s been exported.

A broken license cannot be transferred.  You repair it by launching max on
the PC where the license was last imported, and just follow the dialogs.

--Cy--

<Shimakaze> wrote in message news:4947@area.3ds.max_general…
>I recently migrated from XP 32 to Vista 64 and when doing so I transfered
>my 2009 Design license to my laptop.
> When installing 3ds on Vista afterwards I attempted to transfer the
> license there, but even though at first it seemed to work,
> the license transfer utility showed the license as “broken” and wants me
> to transfer the license again but now it doesn’t work on either machine. I
> tried saving out the transfer file again from the laptop but it just says
> the license has already been imported.
> Anyone got any hints to what I should do? Even if I were to reactivate
> Max, the same thing might just happen again.
> --
>

Thank you. I’ll give that a try.

yeah well try having 3ds max 2009 license keep breaking when you dare to plug in a USB hd or switch a motherboard. Don’t think reinstalling windows will work either, because the minute you change some hardware your license is broken again and it starts all over. Wow, what a piece of junk. Even the non-mac version has the same problems.

IshtaDevata 09 January 2009 08:37 PM

yeah well try having 3ds max 2009 license keep breaking when you dare to plug in a USB hd or switch a motherboard. Don’t think reinstalling windows will work either, because the minute you change some hardware your license is broken again and it starts all over. Wow, what a piece of junk. Even the non-mac version has the same problems.

??? There is only a non-mac version.

One reason the security is tight, and the license will indeed “break” when you do what you mentioned, is that the 30-day trial is the full-featured program. Not some stripped down, watermarked render, no-saving-of-scene-files, program.

I’ve exported and imported licenses for an entire lab of computers without issue. Keep in mind that was on XP and earlier Windows versions.

Also, we have never broken a license by pluging in a USB HD.

Switching a motherboard is the same as installing on a new computer. If you need to do that, first export your license to another system, exchange your hardware, and then import the license. Keep in mind that with hardware changes your Machine ID code will most likely be different. You simply cannot export to the same machine, make hardware changes, and expect to import back to the same machine: the original machine no longer exists.

Tim Wilbers [FA]

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Visual Arts
University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
3ds Max: 7.5, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010

Well, I meant running 3ds max on mac via bootcamp (which I don’t use...but I heard complaints). Yeah I thought about exporting the license but by the time I thought about it, the thing was broken beyond repair. I haven’t used 3ds max in a while, though but I know some users who have ditched it because of this kind of thing occurring after installing hardware or applying an update; license verification ad-infinitum, then back to 7 days left…

Not everybody has 2 or 4 computers, so what do you suggest they do?

If you have the 7 days left, and cannot import back because the machine is different and thus the machine ID number, simply re-authorize.

You may not be able to do it through the normal registration/authorization process and may need to use one of the alternate methods provided: phone, postal-mail, e-mail.

In the student lab, on all versions up to the license we have for 2009, I used stand-alone rather than network deployment. Therefore I could only authorize 1 via the interface, all the others were done via e-mail.

Autodesk anticipates broken licenses, like when the HD died on one of our systems. New drive, new setup, new installation of max, broken license. I emailed in the request code, they sent back an activation code.

Tim Wilbers [FA]

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Visual Arts
University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
3ds Max: 7.5, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010

IshtaDevata wrote:
> yeah well try having 3ds max 2009 license keep breaking when you dare to plug in a USB hd or switch a motherboard. Don’t think reinstalling windows will work either, because the minute you change some hardware your license is broken again and it starts all over. Wow, what a piece of junk. Even the non-mac version has the same problems.

Pretty much the only thing that should break your license is changing
the boot disk.  Thanks to early feedback from 3ds max v4 users, you can
change the CPU, memory, secondary hard disks, etc (changing the mb might
be pushing it, don’t you think?  It’s hard to detect the same cabinet in
software...).  And of course the problems it avoids were all the ones
caused in the Good Old Days by hardware locks.

If an external USB drive was previously a boot drive on another system,
yes, plugging it in can cause system confusion.  The network license
completely works around any dependency on your local system.

If you have current problems, please post your error code and we can help.

--Cy--