Licence is not memorized

[SPECTRUM]

Dear support team,

we have PDF-XChange Editor running on a customer terminal server system (Windows Server 2012R2).
The licence key was implemented in the Admin account and is valid.
Unfortunately when running the program as user, the licence key isn't deposited. The users have to put in the key everytime they start the software and also when they put together a PDF file.

Is the key saved into a key file? Can I put that into the local user directories or something?
Quick help would be great!

Thanks,
Andreas

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Andreas,

Please take a look here:
I have a problem with serial keys not sticking on server farm.
As I believe this is what's happening and the above KB has the solution!

I would also recommend you to take a look here:
https://help.pdf-xchange.com/sysadmin

Regards,
Stefan

[SPECTRUM]

Hello Andreas,

Please take a look here:
I have a problem with serial keys not sticking on server farm.
As I believe this is what's happening and the above KB has the solution!

I would also recommend you to take a look here:
https://help.pdf-xchange.com/sysadmin

Regards,
Stefan

Hey Stefan,

thanks for your answer. I tried the

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xcvault.exe /OpenKeys /M

command. The first test was successfull. I will do this on every RDSH and give a feedback!

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

[SPECTRUM]

Hey Stefan!

Unfortunately the workaround didn't work.
The users have to put in the licence key everytime they use a premium feature on the Editor. Also the key isn't saved in the user profiles.
Is there any other way to make that work?

Kind regards,
Andreas

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Andreas,

I will ask the colleague who wrote the Sysadmin manuals to take a look, as he has better understanding of licensing on servers, and he will post his advise a bit later!

Regards,
Stefan

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Hi SPECTRUM,

what is your intended goal here? We will take a different approach depending on whether you want all users on your Terminal Server to have access to the license, ie, apply the license per machine, or do you intend having only some users licensed and the rest to have access only to the free features?

The second piece that is important is to tell us whether you employ any load balancing between severs.

Assuming "All USers" with load balancing across a server farm, then it should be sufficient to to put the key, dectrypted, on the servers in HKLM. Your command

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xcvault.exe /OpenKeys /M

would have applied the key(s) to all users and should be visible in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Tracker Software\Vault\0000 - 0001, 0002 etc depending on whether this is the first , second, third key applied. You should be able to see it. If it looks like this, with no prefix like PXP, or PEP etc to designate the product, you know it is still encrypted:

If you run the command with the options /M and /R

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xcvault.exe /OpenKeys /M /R

you should see the key decrypted. It should be the long string you see on your account page when you copy the serial.

With a decrypted key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Tracker Software\Vault all your users should have access to the fully licensed product.

Can you email tell me if the issue is still present with the decrypted key in place at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Tracker Software\Vault?

Is that what your final goal is then? All users on a farm licensed? I am keen to hear whether the key is in that location and decrypted.

If your needs are different please do let me know.

Paul

[Paul - Tracker Supp]

Posting this for the benefit of users reading this thread. I was contacted outside of the forum. The key was not where it was expected to be after running the command

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xcvault.exe /OpenKeys /M /R

Like you see in the screenshot below the „Vault“ key in the Registry Editor in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Tracker Software\ hasn’t any more sub keys.

Trying the „xcvault.exe /OpenKeys /M /R“ command didn’t change anything. I also tried re-adding the key in the admin profile but that didn’t work either.

My response:

OK - well the command we used assumed the key was already there in the registry but encrypted. /OpenKeys will only decrypt, not add the keys.

I do apologies, assumptions are risky at best. Since the key is not in there, this is still our goal then, an unencrypted key in :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Tracker Software\Vault\0000

To apply the key, make sure that you have a copy of the key in it's file form, that is by default called Personal.xcvault. Typically you simply download the key file from your account page. https://www.pdf-xchange.com/login

Once you have the KeyFile you use this command to add the key:

"%programfiles%\Tracker Software\Vault\XCVault.exe" /AddKeys /M /R "\\UNC\path\to\Personal.xcvault"

This command MUST be run with Administrative rights, the /M puts the key in HKLM like we want, and the /R tels it to not encrypt the key. You need all 5 components for your case:

• Must be run as Administrator
• must use /AddKeys,
• must use /M
• must use /R
• must have the license as a file (KeyFile)

Let me know how that goes?