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Trial Licence Problems Linked to a MAC Address

System specifications:

The underlying problem is that GraphPad links its trial machine usage to a MAC address. When a Fresh Start machine is cloned, it typically carries over the same MAC address. This ordinarily wouldn’t be a concern, but here the application reports that the licence has already been utilised, as it was on a previously cloned instance. The machine could be situated on a completely different server, or in a datacentre on a different continent, and this error would persist. 

The workaround, therefore, is to alter the MAC address. This is straightforward and well documented under Linux, but considerably less so when using Windows.

The commonly advised methods for modifying the MAC address within Windows won’t succeed, because the machine’s qemu.conf file overrides any internal MAC change. So while you can adjust the MAC address in Windows 10, that alone will not resolve the problem.

This occurs because the qemu.conf file contains a MAC address that is specifically configured for the machine. Altering this address provides a different MAC and consequently allows a fresh licence key to be used. 

For this to take effect, ‘Network Isolation’ on each machine must first be set to ‘Disabled’; after that, the MAC address defined in qemu.conf will be active.

Please contact DaDesktop Support for assistance if you encounter this problem.