Hardware-locked Key not valid

I have a number of customers who use my padlock-coded excel and the hardware-locked key I produced for them from their System ID has always worked fine.

As Activation Settings I use:
End users must enter an activation Key…
Use hardware-locked keys… with System ID
Application Master Key (unique)

I use no additional settings.

However with my latest customer, there is no way of getting the key to work after several trials with severals keys: Message: “Key not valid”. Both the System ID and the key were always copied and pasted by Clipboard on both sides.

One thing is special with this customer. He had no microsoft office installed. So I invited him to share one of my 5 Office 365 home licenses, as suggested and allowed by microsoft. He then had no problem with his free office 365 installation. He can open Excel.

But no way of opening my padlock-coded excel file!

What can I do to solve the problem?

What system ID options did you choose?

I used Use hard disk serial number

In an older version of XLSPadlock, the default settings included the MAC address, which I found out changes if uses are switching from company VPN to other networks. I now use the default for the new version of XLSPadlock which works great.



Hope that helps.

Thanks

Dan

Make sure that the EXE your customer has is the correct one. Sometimes, especially if you have different EXE versions, customers can use the wrong version.

There are only too versions available for my customers. The 64Bit- and the 32Bit-Version.
Should he start the wrong one, he gets a clear hint from the error message, that he needs a 32 Bit Version and has a 64Bit Version of Excel and vice versa.
However my customer gets the message, that the key is not valid.

And you never released new updates/builds of your EXE files?

Yes I did. But they all have the same master key, the same GUID and the same Appl. Secret Key. I never changed these 3 items.
Customers take the (same) exe from my dropbox, so they all have it identical within the same update period. Other customers and myself have no problem with opening the actual version.

For this customer, try to change to Manufacturer-allocated Serial Number of the USB stick or first hard disk.

As mentioned above, I always used hard disk serial number as system ID options

There is “hard disk serial number” and “Manufacturer-allocated Serial Number of the USB stick or first hard disk”. They are not the same.

Ok, I will try the setting “Manufacturer-allocated Serial Number of the USB stick or first hard disk” instead of “hard disk serial number” with this one customer and report. Which means this customer needs a special version of the exe because I do not like to force all my other customers to ask for new keys in case I change system ID Options with my next update. A nuisance!

I do not understand what is really going on in this case and what risk I take, that this will happen with other customers as well. Which is the setting of System ID Options, which minimises this risk? Are combined settings better? The manual is not very helpful in this respect. In the past I learned to avoid MAC address setting because MAC adress can change.

If you enable a setting and that setting’s method fails (for some reason), it’s ignored and goes back to the default hard disk SN.

Supposed the exe is set to “Manufacturer-allocated Serial Number of the USB stick or first hard disk” according to your recommendation.

Suppose the customer produces his System ID with his USB Stick plugged and gets its key according to this configuration. Does his System ID Change, if he later starts his exe with unplugged stick? Does he need a new key? If yes I cannot seen any good reason to use “Manufacturer-allocated Serial Number of the USB stick or first hard disk”.

Suppose the customer produces his System ID with his USB Stick unplugged and gets its key according to this configuration. Does his System ID Change, if he starts his exe with a plugged stick? Does he need a new key? If yes I cannot seen any good reason to use “Manufacturer-allocated Serial Number of the USB stick or first hard disk”.

My customers have various systems unknown to me. So my above question is still not answered: Which is the setting of System ID Options, which minimises the risk of my customers to not being able to open my exe due to coding problems?

The USB stick’s serial number will only be used by XLS Padlock if you work with the USB-locking feature. Otherwise, it’s the first hard disk’s SN that is used.
In a future version of XLS Padlock, we’ll add an option to let XLS Padlock determine the best hardware method to select. So that, you won’t have to find out which one is the best, depending on your customers.