Offline deactivation tries to connect to internet

Hey Dan,

There's no way to deactivate "manually activated" systems. Deactivation requires an internet connection (as does the IsGenuine -- so there's no way to re-validate manually activated systems either) because the server needs to confirm the deactivation actually took place.

If you need to activate additional computers either deactivate the user within LimeLM (which doesn't deactivate the user's computer - so they can still use the activate software uninhibited) or increase the number of allowed activations for the product key.

Does this make sense?

I'm using the wrong terms. I'm using the serial-only plan which never needs to communicate with your servers.

It's not a big deal. I was calling deactivate every time the program was loaded and then re-checking the key by adding it again.

Since it's a serial only key, it doesn't need to connect to the internet to dis-associate the key, but it does anyway.

And again, this is only noticeable when the internet isn't turned on.

You can recheck a key by simply call IsProductKeyValid(). It will recheck the stored product key. If you call BlackListKeys() before you call IsProductKeyValid() then the IsProductKeyValid() will check against the blacklist you provide.

Also, if you want to use a new product key, simply call CheckAndSavePKey() again with the new product key.

You don't need to call Deactivate() at all if you aren't using the activation functionality.

A cool "offline activation" feature would be to let us generate a key that has to be used within xx days. After that, the key is no longer valid. So you give the key to the user, they have 2 days to activate offline, but if the key is propagated beyond 2 days, it won't work. Would require embedding an expire date into the key using a some hash.

Hey Darren,

You must be reading our minds 😉 . We're releasing this exact functionality next week.

That is, you'll be able to specify when the "activation response" can no longer be used. By default it will be 2 weeks in the future, but it will be fully configurable (you can choose 2 days if you want).

Of course, the "activation response" files are already locked to hardware (that is, if they're leaked on the internet they are useless for everyone except the leaker). But we see the need for limiting the time when an activation response can be used.

Hey Darren,

You can now specify the date when the activation response file (for offline activations) is no longer valid.