I ran set up files for Dotfuscator Professional Edition 3.0. after running setup it takes input from user to complete registration. Then after completing registation it asks user for serial number. i mistakenly input the wrong serial number. if i open it now it gives me following error.
Invalid Dotfuscator Serial Number. Please contact your vendor
after clicking Ok it closes the application. i tried re-installing software (in hope that it will ask me for serial key again) but picking already entered wrong serial numbers. i also had tried deleting old registry values.
I dont want to format my machine right now to complete its removal and this software is must.if i again install windows it will eat up my whole day with all softwares.
can anybody suggest something. i want this to completely install and then install and activate it with correct serial number.
You should be able to correct this by deleting your "Dotfuscator.dat" file, which is located in
"C:\ProgramData\PreEmptive Solutions\Dotfuscator Professional Edition\3.0" (or the equivalent for your operating system).
Related
We are using InstallShield 2020 Professional SP3, on Windows 10 Pro.
We have an automated build server that automates Install Shield (via its command line interface, 'ISCmdBld.exe') to build an Installer for our Internal Product on demand. To accomplish this, it calls a PowerShell (.ps1) script that gathers all the pertinent information (such as the Product Key GUID, binaries, etc.), and passes parameters for the paths and Product Key into IsCmdBld.exe. For the past few years, this process has been working more or less flawlessly, up until recently when our Installer is giving us the following error almost immediately after its launched. Looking thru the MSI Log file, it appears this occurs after the "ResolveSource" action.
There are two things to note here: 1. Our installer, in no way has any business changing any password in the system. When I google error, "1324", it appears to be a message from Windows when a user attempts to change a password that doesn't meet the complexity requirements. 2. If I build this installer manually using the Install Shield GUI application, everything works as intended.
As it turns out, there was a Linefeed ("\n") after the GUID in our ProductKey.txt file. Our PowerShell Script reads the string data in from this file and passes it to ISCmdBuild.exe. If there are any extraneous characters after the GUID that is passed into the "-z ProductCode " parameter, it causes the Install to engage into some questionable behavior, much like errors in Pointer arithmetic do when developing in unmanaged languages like, C or C++. I know this is likely rare, but I wanted to ask and answer the question up here on Stackoverflow.com just in case anyone else encounters this issue. I have been working with Revenera (Flexera) software support and hopefully, this [now] known issue we experienced will be documented. This simple linefeed jammed me up for days.
I'm getting an error when installing a more recent version of the Windows Software Development Kit on my computer.
Each time I'm trying to install it (wherever it's, my B:\ drive or C:\PROGRA~X) I get that error (at 33% of the "installation"):
An error occurred while installing Windows Performance Toolkit. Log.
The folder path 'Windows Toolkit' contains an invalid character.
Review the setup log files, or contact your system administrator.
So I then decided to login in an other user (and install in it's program folder), and it didn't worked.
I checked the logs and it simply says that there's an invalid character somewhere but there's no more details.
Here is the log files given by the installation program to check the reason of the error (pastebin).
(Also note that in the logs you'll be able to see references to D:\Windows Kits\10\ which is weird as I actually don't have any storage devices associated to D, but I had one before).
I also tried to simply uncheck Windows Performance Toolkit in the installation settings (it's the 1st one) but it didn't worked as it will simply display the same error with the next Toolkit to be installed (and the error still displays at exactly 33% of installation).
Is there any known solutions to solve that problem ?
There's probably a registry key which contains an invalid character due to some reasons but I don't know which one it could be if it was the case...
I really need to install the Windows SDK and then install the WDK, and I don't really want to reset my OS for that.
If you need more information or details about something concerning my system I'll provide them.
I also encountered this problem.
By checking the log, I found that this problem is caused by the string in the registry.
Search in the registry and delete this field.
That's how I solved it. enter image description here
I created a Windows installer for a Client-Server program by using VS 2013 and InstallShield LE 2015.
I log in to a computer as Admin and run the installer. All works fine.
Then I modify the registry for Local_Machine for some keys to define the database location etc. for the program (this was done by the installation initially as well, but due to certain issues discussed in At each login the program tries to configure installation parameters in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE registry, I removed the registry modifying section from the installer).
I then run the program by double-clicking the shortcut placed by the installer on the desktop and test it. All works well.
Then I log off the computer.
Another user with admin rights logins and clicks on the shortcut, and the problem comes: the program starts to reinstall itself!
Then it fixes itself and runs fine.
But If the first user logins afterward, she experiences the same reinstall operation so does the first user afterward ad nauseam!
So, even though the installer does not create any registry items by itself, somehow, as soon as the program accesses the registry, or whatever it thinks broken, the Windows OS intervenes and tries to repair whatever needs fixing.
The InstallShield LE does not allow setting shortcuts to be "Advertised Shortcut", or
I delete the shortcut created by the installer and recreate it manually after the installation and yet experience the same problem. So the nature of the shortcut possibly is not the cause.
This problem only happens for multiple logins to the computer. If many people login by using the same credentials, it never happens.
So, what's wrong? I studied many StackOverflow answers to resolve this issue with no success. Any help would be highly appreciated.
Stein gives a good set of instructions on how to diagnose problems with MSI programs in this StackOverflow answer. When I followed his instructions, I was able to check which component of my MSI program has a problem. It turns out, the serial bus controller library, MScomm32.ocx could not register under Win 10 properly. Once, I implemented the solution in this link, the above problem resolved and I could log in as two different users without initiating a reinstall process whenever the program icon was double-clicked to run.
I'm trying to use this Visual Studio extension for 2013, which recreates the built-in installer functionality from Visual Studio 2008/2010: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2014/04/17/visual-studio-installer-projects-extension.aspx?CommentPosted=true&PageIndex=2#comments
It works, allowing me to edit the project as before. It has the install and uninstall commands when right-clicking the install project, too. It installs fine.
When I try to uninstall, though, I get the following error and then the uninstall rolls back:
Could not open key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE32\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\
EAPSIMMethods\18\FastReauthContext. Verify that you have sufficient
access to that key, or contact your support personnel.
I am not doing anything with that registry key, and there don't seem to be any relevant results on google-- at least not in the normal top 5 pages. Does anyone know what causes this or how I can fix it?
While I am not able to uninstall, I am able to increment the version of the package and allow it to remove the previous install and install the new version (all at once) successfully.
I am using Windows 8.1 Pro 64 bit, the projects are compiled for <AnyCPU>, and the installer is configured for x86.
EDIT I am running Visual Studio as Admin. When uninstalling from the Control Panel, I am also clicking the 'allow' button in the UAC dialog window that pops up.
I know how to give myself access to a registry key (permissions). I want to know why this key is trying to be removed. I support this app on several machines and I don't want to have worry about remembering an uninstall hack in the future.
EDIT This only seems to be an issue for a 32x installer on a 64x OS or a Windows 8 issue. I was able to use the same 32x installer to successfully uninstall the app on a 32x Windows 7 machine.
This must be an environmental problem, that key doesn't have anything to do with installers. EAP-SIM is an authentication protocol for wireless networks. The FastReauthContext key almost surely was meant to avoid having to provide a username+password each time your machine reconnects to the network. Which makes the registry key content very sensitive of course, it can only be read by a service that runs with the System account.
So, something goofy going on with your networking setup. Verify that you can successfully reconnect to such a network. If you used a VPN before then make sure it is active again. Something like this. Update your question with anything that might be relevant to networking when you first installed the app.
I have had similar problem and what I found out this is caused by MSI attempting to delete whole "Software\Microsoft" section in the registry. Lucky you that it encounters this error and rolls everything back.
So the solution is the following:
Since you have installed your program whenever you try to uninstall it the system will run msi from cache that is usually located C:\Windows\Installer.
Find your package in the cache. Here is an article that may help you http://csi-windows.com/blog/all/27-csi-news-general/334-identifying-cached-msi-packages-in-cwindowsinstaller-without-opening-them
Open the package in Orca. You must do this as administrator.
Go to Registry table and find record with "Software\Microsoft" as a key. Most likely the Name column will contain either "-" or "*" value. This means that during uninstall MSI will try to delete whole "Software\Microsoft".
Either change the Name value to empty or "+" or try to change key to something like "Microsoft". The second option will cause that installer will not find the key to delete during uninstall, but it will skip this error and let you uninstall your program.
You installed an untested installer on your dev machine? Speaking from experience, don't do that! Snapshotted VM's are cheap and will save you from this sort of pain.
Visual Studio Deployment Projects (or VSI as it's now called ) is known for creating very poor quality installs. The combination of those two put you where you are today.
I would need to look at the full uninstall log and your MSI using ORCA to understand exactly what is going on. MSI Zap and a manual cleanup of resources is probably required at this point.
There is a Windows program which is downloaded after entering a valid serial in a web page. Now, I want to limit the user to install the program only on one single PC, the one he or she installed for the first time.
I need some advice on creating a such system. Thank you.
P.S. Serial key must be entered on the web page instead of the installer.
Sounds like you need to create a downloadable activex control program that will run on the client's machine in which it will interrogate:
MAC of network adapter
Windows Version, including SP
Hard disk serial number
Processor make and CPU type
And relay the information back to the website, then generate the key, and attach the key to the download installer and permit the user to download the installer in which the key is then read in at run-time and checked against the machine that is running on.
The only thing is the ActiveX must be written in C/C++ as you cannot do it on the .NET language as that is assuming the client's machine will have the runtime installed which IMHO is a dangerous assumption.
Hope this helps,
Best regards,
Tom.
The usual solution is:
Create a hash describing the system (don't know the exact way to get it though, GIYF) & combine it with the serial, so when the user installs the program he has to enter the serial, then gets a key he has to enter on the website which splits the entered key into the serial and the system hash and checks if the system hash and serial match the stored ones and then returns another key (or an error if the serial was already used) he has to enter into the program.
Using the Mac Adress as a system key is not a good solution as it can easily be faked.
Base the serial number on some hardware configuration. If the hardware changes, then invalidate the serial number. Microsoft windows uses this type of approach during the activation of the product.
Hope this helps some.
If you write a custom installer then you could send an acknowledgement to your web server upon successful install that sends a serial # generated from the hardware, and the serial # they used to download the file.
Then if you find the same serial # but a different hardware serial, you can send a response back saying that you could not activate the software...
EDIT
Here is some info on getting hardware info (assuming a .NET environment, but you can find similar for the environment you are using).
You could try blocking the key on install and unblocking the key when they uninstall. That way they can only use the key once between each uninstall.
set up a web service and database ... they have to validate to be able to install. the problem with your model at the moment is that you are protecting or hiding your software behind the server. You want peopel to have the software even if they cant use it (usually). the serial key stage should be there to unlock the software at runtime.
Its the only model that works for computer games.
You need to poll various pieces of hardware to generate a guid, hash it against a product key and you have a reproducible yet complex and hard to forge piece of data.
http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/26040 A link to the .com interfaces to get at the guids
an alternative would be to use something like sysinfo or dxdiag and save the rseults to a file ... hash it and use that as the serial. A lot less coding involved - but a bit messier.
Store this and issue the installation key - easy to spot and manage reinstalls then.
Ie you really don't want to go 'computer says no' - its really a marketing opportinuty