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Problems with Trial Licences Bound to a MAC Address

Machine details:

The difficulty arises because GraphPad links its trial usage to a specific MAC address. When a Fresh Start machine is cloned, it normally keeps the same MAC. Under ordinary circumstances this wouldn’t matter, but here the application reports that the licence has already been used, just as it would on any previously cloned machine. The machine could be on a different server, in a datacenter even on another continent, and the same error will appear. 

The workaround is straightforward – change the MAC address. On Linux this is simple and well documented, but with Windows it’s less straightforward.

Attempting to change the MAC address inside Windows using the usual recommendations won’t help, because the machine’s qemu.conf file will override any MAC change you make within the OS. So changing the MAC in Windows 10 alone still won’t resolve this.

This happens because the qemu.conf file contains a pre-configured MAC address. You can modify that address to get a different MAC, which in turn allows a different licence key to be used. 

For this change to take effect, though, you must set ‘Network Isolation’ on each machine to ‘Disabled’ – then the MAC address defined in qemu.conf will be applied.

If you run into this issue, please contact DaDesktop Support for assistance.