Summary:
Everything was working great and you were compressing imagery left and right. Now out of nowhere GeoExpress says it is in trial mode, or worse, that you have no license at all! If this happens to you always check to see if the Locking Code has changed first.
Explanation:
GeoExpress licenses are always restricted by the unique Locking Code of their matching computer. For Local licenses this would be the client computer, and for Floating licenses this would be the computer the License Server is installed on. A combination of hardware and software variables mix up together to generate a Locking Code that is specific to only that computer. When Extensis generates a license for GeoExpress it is tied to and dependent on this Locking Code. GeoExpress opens up and looks at three things - the Locking Code, the Serial Number, and the License - to determine if it is licensed or not. The Locking Code says what computer it is. The Serial Number determines what edition of GeoExpress License it is looking for. And the License tells GeoExpress whether or not it is valid for both the Serial Number and the Locking Code. In normal use these things never change. However, if any of these components are missing or altered, the licensing process will fail. Few people make changes to the License or Serial Number, so usually the explanation for a suddenly failed License is that something caused the Locking Code to change. If the Locking Code changed your existing license will never be valid on that computer again. You need to request a new one from Extensis support.
Possible reasons for a locking code change:
Hardware change:
Making changes to the hardware of the computer such as the network card or hard drive.
Operating system change:
Changing or upgrading the operating system. This is very common with Windows upgrades.
Virtual machine node change:
If you are in a virtualized environment sometimes the host will move the virtual machine to a new node. Even though everything appears to be the same, if the hardware on the back end has been moved from one computer to another, this will also alter the locking code of the virtual computer.
Multiple hard drives:
Occasionally the Locking Code can be inconsistent if you have more than one hard drive installed on the computer. The Locking Code is used to only recognizing one hard drive at a time, so sometimes it gets confused and jumps around to different hard drives making the Locking Code change each time. This happens very rarely.
Computer change:
If you move GeoExpress to a new computer all of the hardware and software is completely different! Get in touch with Extensis support about a computer move.