I installed VisualCron 5.6.2 trial on our server late last week (Friday, maybe?) and everything was going OK. Today, I get an e-mail from my boss that he's getting messages about the license being expired. Sure enough, the tray client shows a popup message that the license is expired when I log into the server, when I check the status of my test jobs (that are set to run at 5- and 10-minute intervals), the last time they ran was on Friday, and when I attempt to run one of them manually, I get:

"You don't have permission to perform this action. Reason: your trial period of VisualCron is out. Please purchase a license to activate all functions again. During this time your jobs will still be run on the server. Thank you."

Note that because of problems we've been having with the Windows Task Scheduler, we've been rebooting this server daily. I did notice previous reports of similar problems with licenses (not trial licenses) expiring with server reboots, and I'm wondering if this is related.

Two problems:
1. It's been considerably less than the 45 days that the trial is supposed to be.
2. When the trial expires, the jobs are supposed to continue to run, but it appears that they are not running.

Thanks,

Rebeccah

Edited to add:
In the About tab, About VisualCron, I see the License Status is Trial (-40045 days left). I'm about to try restarting the service and see if that changes anything.

Restarting the service didn't help. The tray icon popup says, "Trial has expired. Get your license now."

Rebeccah

And now the License Status says -734005 days left. Not sure why that value is changing.

And now when I close the client (the copy that is on the server), I get a tray popup that says, "Trial has expired and jobs will no longer be executed."

I don't get any of these tray popups in the client that I have installed on my laptop. I do get the error message when I try to run a job manually, though.

Rebeccah

Please send us your log_server.txt log file. Also, send your activation code to sales@visualcron.com so we can reset it.

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Please send us your log_server.txt log file. Also, send your activation code to sales@visualcron.com so we can reset it.

I will send you the log files. There is no activiation code. This is a trial. It should not be expired, we've only had it installed less than 2 weeks.

Rebeccah

I sent the log files a little while ago.

I hope this can be resolved quickly - I have a bunch more jobs to configure, and we have to follow how everything runs for a while before my boss will pull the trigger on paying for a license (the Windows Task Scheduler problem we are trying to work around is very intermittent).

Thanks,

Rebeccah

Dennis from sales sent a trial extension key to use while they look at my logs, but I am not able to use it - I get an "unkonwn error" when I try to enter it. Now what?

I believe the reason is probably a problem with WMI was causing this premature reset and also this problem. Access to WMI is needed for the license system.

You need to repair the WMI - then apply the extension again. Please follow the instructions here:

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/repairwmi.htm 

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Ugh.

OK, looks like I have some reading to do. Thanks.

Rebeccah

Thank you very much, Henrik. It turns out I was not even able to run WMIDiag.vbs at first, because during a previous project (which was subsequently abandoned), someone registered an older version of scrrun.dll, and it lacked the entrypoint for DoOpenPipeStream.

Once I found the problem and registered the correct version of the DLL file, I was able to install the trial extension key. I now have 29 days left on the trial, which seems about right.

I also did go ahead and run WMIDiag.vbs. WMI seems to be OK, but has some security changes that I just wanted to check if they are going to be a problem:
1. Both the NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE and the NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SERVICE have had the following default permissions removed:
WBEM_METHOD_EXECUTE
WBEM_WRITE_PROVIDER
2. Also, EVERYONE has been completely removed.
3. DCOM Default Authentication is NOT set to 'Connect' (it is set to None).

Does VisualCron have any need to execute WBEM methods or write WBEM providers?
Does VisualCron use the default DCOM LegacyAuthenticationLevel, or does it set its own?

Thanks,

Rebeccah

Thanks for the update Rebbecah,

you should not worry about the changed made. When needed, VisualCron will use specific connection settings and authentication levels.

We do not use WBEM methods - we go directly against WMI.

Please let us know if you encounter any problems after this update.

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