Software iLok - license safe if HD fails?

[AcrossTheSky]

With that said, the whole point of machine activations is to either save money on the dongle or for convenience. I personally don't trust either of them, but if I have to choose, I'll take the dongle over the machine ID. I've read somewhere that even a Windows update can trigger such a machine issue, but I can't remember where I heard that.

True that - to save on dongle and for convenience but at the stake of loosing licenses and begging companies to depose other. Having/buying multiple licenses just "in case" is ridiculous. This whole ilok machine activation and not being able to deactivate it if mobo dies is ridiculous. Other companies implemented that in their security solutions years ago. So their whole nonsense about "we are not being able to do so we are merely a company of monkeys offering other companies bananas" is fallacy.

I agree with you i believe physical key is more secure then computer ID.

I am just shocked how they get a pass on this ridicule moronic service. Talking about machine activation.

Like they added machine activation just to shut up some people. Hey we have cloud solution. But it's crippled in our favor (ZDT). But at the same time they kept ZDT (which should be active for anyone all the time!!!! for free)

Try Acronis true image backup disk.Use
option to include disk signature..
When restoring to a new disk use option to write the disk signature to the new drive.
It should work - maybe if you have a duplicate license to try it on - you can test this method.

[AndrewLMacaulay]

I think that the Soft iLok is tied specifically to the PC, and for Windows PCs at least this seems to be the MAC address of the active network connection --- this can be interesting when a machine has multiple active Ethernet ports (with multiple MAC addresses) where it can fail if it sees the "wrong" network card (which is where I found this out).

If this is the case, it does mean that "recovery" (in case of hardware failure) does not "just work" across new motherboards (even with clever backups), although I've not tried manually setting the MAC address of the network card on the new motherboard to the old one to see if that works.

CORRECTION: Apologies, I have rechecked this and I was confusing Waves Audio's process of using the MAC address for the machine ID with iLok - the Soft iLok mechanism is tied to a machine ID, but I'm not sure how this is generated.

[zzz00m]

I think that the Soft iLok is tied specifically to the PC, and for Windows PCs at least this seems to be the MAC address of the active network connection --- this can be interesting when a machine has multiple active Ethernet ports (with multiple MAC addresses) where it can fail if it sees the "wrong" network card (which is where I found this out).

If this is the case, it does mean that "recovery" (in case of hardware failure) does not "just work" across new motherboards (even with clever backups), although I've not tried manually setting the MAC address of the network card on the new motherboard to the old one to see if that works.

The easiest way is to deactivate your licenses from the "old" computer before making any changes that may cause it to be detected as a new computer. Then reactivate them from the "new" computer after you are done making the changes.

This won't work if your hardware suddenly fails, such as my motherboard did.

In that case you will need to contact each individual software publisher to have your activations reset. Because once you "change" the computer, you will no longer have any access to reset them yourself from the "old" computer.

[BONES]

I don't know if that's the case. I had a problem with my Air VSTi's and iLok just reset everything for me, no problems. It did take me 10 minutes or so to reactivate things but it was hardly a chore and it fixed the issue.

[Effectsworks]

I'd pay for the extra zero-down time. It's worth it for the piece of mind.

[rod_zero]

iLok is just more inconvenient that other copy protection, i just avoid it like the plague, maybe one day I really fall for eventide stuff but in the meanwhile I hope iLok burns