Resetting Activations

Anything?

The customer can do it themselves: http://wyday.com/limelm/help/activations/#deactivate

And you can make it even easier by calling Deactivate() in your uninstaller. So all you'd have to do is tell the customer to uninstall your app.

I am in the same situation and sadly that won't help much.Customers lose computers, reinstall Windows, format hard drives and do tons of other things as our software is not the only one they use so they forget to deactivate.It might be a very rare occurrence but once you have few thousands people using the software you start getting those requests daily.

Sorry for double post, I can't edit previous one.I think the best solution is to make simple service where customer could log in and reset their activations.We are probably going to add that in few months.

LMpiot123 wrote:> Sorry for double post, I can't edit previous one.> I think the best solution is to make simple service where customer could> log in and reset their activations.> We are probably going to add that in few months.

Yes this is exactly what I need. Can you please explain how you are going to do this, so I can tell my dev how to do this?

Short answer: don't do this.

Longer answer: don't do this because it gives malicious customers the ability to use your software on unlimited machines, thereby defeating the entire purpose of online activation to being with.

If you're determined to do it, I would do it in a more automated, but not completely automated form. For example: a user that "lost" or "broke" (which does occasionally legitimately happen) their original computer:

1. have them fill out a form on your website where they enter their product key.2. After they enter the key have your script send a notification to you and/or your admins3. Only after an admin manually verifies and processes the request, do you reset the activation. And you can make it a click of the button operation using the web API.

Web API: http://wyday.com/limelm/help/api/

Functions you'll want to use:

http://wyday.com/limelm/help/api/limelm.pkey.deactivate/http://wyday.com/limelm/help/api/limelm.pkey.getDetails/http://wyday.com/limelm/help/api/limelm.pkey.find/

Other, better solution, to the problem: have the customer buy a new license if they want to use your software on more than 1 computer. Or have them deactivate before they move your software.

Let me know if that helps.

>>Other, better solution, to the problem: have the customer buy a new license if they want to use your software on more than 1 computer. Or have them deactivate before they move your software.

There are two problems with it:1)We feel it's unfair to force customer to but a new license (one costs several hundred dollars in our case) just because they have lost or damaged a laptop2)The licensing system is not 100% reliable when it comes to lost activations

Things like Windows 10 upgrade resets it most of the time but sometimes small hardware changes the user wouldn't expect to reset the license do as well (one already often discussed example is network interface change). Maybe a user just wants to update something or change some component and they never expected the license to stop working even though they should have. The problem is (at least in my case) that my users aren't computer experts to put it mildly. Significant % of them don't even know what CPU is or what the difference between RAM and hard drive space is. Customers like that are bound to hurt themselves in 101 ways even when given clear instructions.

I kinda agree with making it difficult for them idea to prevent blatant abuse. On the other hand I feel most people really are honest about reasons they give. It's a hard problem imo.

>> "2)The licensing system is not 100% reliable when it comes to lost activations"

We're significantly improving this in TurboActivate 4.0 (eliminating all known false-positives and false-negatives).

Also, in the revamped LimeLM interface (coming a couple months after 4.0 is released) we're making it easier for you to tell exactly what is different between computers. This will take the guess-work out of determining whether the customer is lying to you or not.

At any rate, you would never want to make an automated system where a customer can reset a product key without any interaction on your side. If you did allow that then they could use the product key on unlimited computers.

Yeah, I agree the fully automated system is a bad idea.I think LimeLM is quite reliable btw. You were bitten by Windows 10 mess as many other people were. If it wasn't for that single thing the problems would be very rare in my experience and usually caused by big hardware changes the user made or by their carelessness.

See attached image. I get this a lot. Two activations on the same IP Address. I only allow two activations, and now I have to go in manually and reset activations: https://www.dropbox.com/s/28wxejin0wuh4s5/Two_IPs.png?dl=0

It is a hassle and I would love a fix now. We know how long we've waited for version 4.0 and it's been over a year since you've said this, so to be honest there is no hope that 4.0 will be availabe until 2018. We've waited a long time for the promised 4.0 that it doesn't even seem likely.

Can you please add some upgraded features to 3.0 so we can solve this issue now, so we con't have to wait until 2018 for Version 4.0?

...in my humble opinion and in our experience those are two different machines then. On Mac hardware changes are super rare and I do not recall a real false positive on Mac (we have a few thousand licenses out there). Windows is a different issue - Win 10 caused some mess and the network adapter issue is still there... But for Macs: I guess they have multiple computers. We sell 50% to Mac and we don't encounter this problem at all... I guess they are lying to you. If the dates were a few months apart one could guess they replaced something - but not like a 45 min timeframe. Also with upgrades in the OS - no problem.

I get these all of the time....And I too have a few thousand licenses.

More information is needed. On Mac OS X, our fingerprinting algorithm is pretty rock solid. We have no known false-negatives (same computer being reported as a different computer) that didn't undergo a major change (like a motherboard being replaced).

On Windows our fingerprinting algorithm needed (and received) a bit of love. In 4.0 (out soon) we've fixed all known false-positives and false-negatives. The biggest case of false-negatives being when a customer disabled network adapters. We've worked around that problem (and others) in 4.0.

On Linux our fingerprinting algorithm has 2 known cases of false-negatives that are fixed in 4.0.

That's a long way of saying, if you're having a problem with a customer on a Mac, you need to give us a whole lot more information. Starting with the product key so we can actually look up the hardware fingerprints. Also version numbers (TurboActivate version, Operating system version, hardware it's running on, etc.)

Preferably a way to reproduce the problem.

It's likely exactly like Jan said (especially in the case of that screenshot). A customer used the product key on 2 separate computers and said it was the licensing software that is broken. It wouldn't be the first time a customer lied to get free software.