FlexNet Licensing error:-96,7

Recently one of my machines on the farm went down for a while and it didn’t want to load windows properly
I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was, but my gut feeling is that is shutdown during a windows (7sp1-64bits) update.
Via the restore options in safemode I could get it working again when I restored the system to the restore point prior to the last update.

Now when deadline launches I get an “license invalid/expired” status in the monitor and it refuses to activate itself.
I figured that reinstalling the latest deadline 8 (I was running a slightly older beta version) would do the trick.
unfortunately I still get the same message while I still have license slots free.
It only happens on this machine and I have no clue why.
The machine can reach the license server ip without a problem.
I also tried a uninstall-install to avoid old files being left.

how to solve this?

Connecting to 3DNode5... 2013-01-11 07:15:40: Could not obtain license because it has expired. 2013-01-11 07:15:40: Scheduler Thread - >>> LICENSE CHECK OUT FAILED, SKIPPING TASK DEQUEUING 2013-01-11 07:15:56: Connecting to Slave log: 3DNode5 2013-01-11 07:15:56: Could not obtain license because: 2013-01-11 07:15:56: License server machine is down or not responding. 2013-01-11 07:15:56: See the system administrator about starting the license server system, or 2013-01-11 07:15:56: make sure you're referring to the right host (see LM_LICENSE_FILE). 2013-01-11 07:15:56: Feature: deadline 2013-01-11 07:15:56: Hostname: 3dserver 2013-01-11 07:15:56: License path: @192.168.0.3;@3dserver;C:\Software\Thinkbox\thinkbox.lic; 2013-01-11 07:15:56: FlexNet Licensing error:-96,7. System Error: 11001 "Comm. error" 2013-01-11 07:15:56: For further information, refer to the FlexNet Licensing documentation, 2013-01-11 07:15:56: available at "www.flexerasoftware.com". 2013-01-11 07:15:56: Failed to checkout a license using current configuration, checking for auto configuration... 2013-01-11 07:15:56: Auto Configuration: Picking configuration based on: 3DNode5 / 192.168.0.15 2013-01-11 07:15:56: Auto Configuration: No auto configuration could be detected, using local configuration 2013-01-11 07:15:56: The Slave cannot run in LICENSE-FREE MODE because there are more than two Slaves in the Deadline Repository. For more information, please email sales@thinkboxsoftware.com. Success 2013-01-11 07:16:07: Could not obtain license because it has expired. 2013-01-11 07:16:07: Scheduler Thread - >>> LICENSE CHECK OUT FAILED, SKIPPING TASK DEQUEUING 2013-01-11 07:16:24: Could not obtain license because: 2013-01-11 07:16:24: License server machine is down or not responding. 2013-01-11 07:16:24: See the system administrator about starting the license server system, or 2013-01-11 07:16:24: make sure you're referring to the right host (see LM_LICENSE_FILE). 2013-01-11 07:16:24: Feature: deadline 2013-01-11 07:16:24: Hostname: 3dserver 2013-01-11 07:16:24: License path: @192.168.0.3;@3dserver;C:\Software\Thinkbox\thinkbox.lic; 2013-01-11 07:16:24: FlexNet Licensing error:-96,7. System Error: 11001 "Comm. error" 2013-01-11 07:16:24: For further information, refer to the FlexNet Licensing documentation, 2013-01-11 07:16:24: available at "www.flexerasoftware.com". 2013-01-11 07:16:24: Failed to checkout a license using current configuration, checking for auto configuration... 2013-01-11 07:16:24: Auto Configuration: Picking configuration based on: 3DNode5 / 192.168.0.15 2013-01-11 07:16:24: Auto Configuration: No auto configuration could be detected, using local configuration 2013-01-11 07:16:24: The Slave cannot run in LICENSE-FREE MODE because there are more than two Slaves in the Deadline Repository. For more information, please email sales@thinkboxsoftware.com. 2013-01-11 07:16:35: Could not obtain license because it has expired. 2013-01-11 07:16:35: Scheduler Thread - >>> LICENSE CHECK OUT FAILED, SKIPPING TASK DEQUEUING

Oh boy. This error and the “operation now in progress” are still the strange dark errors of Flexnet Publisher I still don’t know. It doesn’t look like the hostname config problem as outlined here, unless the SERVER line’s host name in “C:\Software\Thinkbox\thinkbox.lic” is written badly.

docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/produc … r96-3.html

The page links to how to configure your licensing environment, so try stripping out every entry that isn’t needed and see if it gives a different error.

Ok, this helped.

In the end I found an old thinkbox.lic file that should have been gone for years (guess the system restore made that happen).
And after removing all registry mentioned of that local file I thought it should be fixed… but I also got a -34 error.
And that turned out to be related to my slave being stuck in the year 2013.
Now I’m not entirely sure if the -96 message also had something to do with the clock being years behind.

all is up to date and running again!

thanks.

I think the date and the license file were unique problems, but nicely done on both! I always love the SSL errors I get when my BIOS battery dies. It never just says “your clock is wrong”, and instead always gives some crazy errors about encryption strategies or the like.