No problem...glad it worked for you.

OK, I must have been drinking some bad juju juice. It is working now. No idea what I was doing before. I have a feeling I've just been added to one of those "top 10 stupid support questions" lists. Sorry for the trouble

Then you didn't choose the NIC that has the same MAC address...it is really that simple.  I don't mind deactivating this for you manually, but I shouldn't have to.  When you activate, you can choose to which NIC you want to bind the license.  When the activation server is contacted, it looks to see if this MAC address has already been activated.  If so, then it will go ahead and give you the activation...period.  But if you try to activate on a different MAC address, then it will try to consume another license, thus the error that you are getting.

You might give it one more stab.  But I have verified and re-verified this and I know this to work and be true.

Hmmm...I must not be understanding how to do that. After the license was deactivated (on the machine with the disappearing NIC), I couldn't do anything with the license. I.e. The NIC came back online, but the license activation reported that the machine wasn't licensed and then went out to the web site and reported back that there were no licenses available. Here is what I saw:



1. Licensed on machine using wired NIC.

2. Disconnected cat 5 cable, turned on wireless adapter

3. Went to use SF security, license was invalid (wired NIC had disappeared from machine)

4. Opened SF license manager to deactivate so I could activate using wireless NIC

5. License manager reported that SF wasn't licensed on the machine. Clicking next indicated that no licenses available.

6. Turned off wireless, plugged cat 5 back in, NIC shows up

7. Opened SF license manager again, still reporting that I have no license

8. Clicking next again reported no licenses available.



I must be missing something here.



So, I'm pretty much stuck at this point. I still can't deactivate via the web and I can't activate using the license manager.

Greg,

i don't have a problem doing this.  But FWIW, you can activate on the same MAC address as many times as you need to.  So once the MAC address is visible again within the laptop, all you need to do is re-activate using that MAC address (NIC) again and you will be able to activate.  We designed the activation process like this early on for this very type of thing...damage control.

I just got a new laptop. I intend to work on it sometimes and on my normal desktop sometimes. No problem, I just need to activate/deactivate, just takes a second and I'm good to go.



Well, I deactivate it on my desktop, activate it on my laptop, using the normal NIC (not the wireless). No problem. Later I setup wireless, start working away (finally). I go to use the Security Editor to setup some permissions and BAM!, I don't have an active license...what the...



It turns out my stupid laptop sort of "removes" the normal NIC when it isn't plugged in...stupid. So, when I unplugged it, that NIC disappeared from my machine. Sigh. So now I have a problem: as part of this little exercise, I have already used my web deactivation (can't remember why) within the last ten days. So I can't do that. I plugged the NIC back in, it shows up again, but apparently the license file is now turned off, and doesn't reactivate (or I can't figure out how to do that).



Sooooo:



- Could you deactivate the licenses on Ehwaz?

- Let me know how to set things right if an adapter disappears, then reappears?



Thanks!