Can't run herolab offline

[deevor]

I use my work laptop to run Herolab and when I originally bought the product, I installed it onto my personal external drive,so that it wouldn't interfere with my work applications. Now after several updates to the product, herolab always considers itsself back level, and always requires I download the latest product level 3.8a, before it will start. This means I cannot run the application offline and totally ruined last nights gaming session when I took it to our gaming group and was unable to use it to create characters for the players and the game I should be running.

I have also tried to change the drive, so copied the product files onto the computer but that failed too. I'm beginning to think that I've just spent loads of money on a product that isn't working.

Whilst I'm on the subject, I've never been able to get the pdf plugin to work either and that is after following several of your forum threads trying to get it to work. I am unimpressed by Hero Lab so far. I hope you can help.

 

[Duggan]

Sending an email to support@wolflair.com is the quickest way to get resolution to your problems. The developers occasionally read the forums, but the support staff read their email.

Did you install the software on the computer or did you just copy the files over? That can make a large difference for most applications?

 

[chiefweasel]

Either way will cause some problem with the license. If you jusy copied the files, then the program just wont work. Unless its a stand along .exe file, you cant just copy the files over and hope it will work. Also when you install HL it creates information that is used for the license. So if you try to re-install it a second time that information gets changed and so the license would not be vaild. But like Duggan said, if you contact the LW support they are very good at getting back to you and working to help you out.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

So if you try to re-install it a second time that information gets changed and so the license would not be vaild.

This is only true of WINDOWS or the OS itself. If you reinstall HL on the same exact computer that has had no major hardware or OS changes it will have no problems with activating the *same* license again.

The problem comes in when trying to move the license around to different computers.

Now after several updates to the product, herolab always considers itsself back level, and always requires I download the latest product level 3.8a, before it will start. This means I cannot run the application offline

When it asks to upgrade the only way it could know is if it is online. Otherwise it couldn't' know there was an update. Even then you can always just say no I will update later.

Another thing that could help is that the download of say HL is stored on your hard drive. Its in your C:\ProgramData\Hero Lab\download\hl38.exe folder assuming you have Win7. So if you really need to do the install each time you can go there to start the install and run it again when offline.

 

[chiefweasel]

Hey Shadow you sure about the re-install? I was fairly sure that it would have some problem with mutlitple installs on the same machines. I think there were a few thread some time back about hard drives that crashed and the HL had issues with the new install. I could be wrong though, wouldn't be the first time, er today, er, this hour even.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

I have not actually done it with 3.8a but I have done it with 3.7 and it had no problems uninstalling and reinstalling HL and activating the license again. From my understanding as long as your hardware has not changed or the OS reinstalled the Windows ID that HL is reading is the same.

Oh and you are using the same HL license. <- This is what causes most people the issue...

If a HD crashed and windows was installed again/new it will generate a new Windows ID and their for HL reads it as a NEW computer.

Also changing too many or important pieces of Hardware, Main HD, motherboard, and even memory can cause windows to have to be reactivated and it then gens a new Windows ID.

I don't have any special view of "exactly" how HL license work but the above is all based on what the devs have said and my observations playing around with different issues my players have had. Plus I have other Development tools that seem to work on the same ideas of this "Windows ID" to tell them if the computer has changed.

As long as that "Windows ID" has not changed HL will let you reactivate a license a hundred times a day if you wish. Also remember each time you want to use a new Data Set you purchased you are activating your license again and each time you upgrade HL software you are activating again without issues. Well I personally have never had a license issue with HL...

 

[deevor]

Thanks for the help, I appreciate it and have requested help from the product line developers/tech support.

Previous upgrades didn't suffer from the problem, it seems to have started with the latest of the updates V3.8 and V3.8a. The problem I get does make it impossible to run the program offline. I am only running HL on one laptop, so will hope the developers can come up with a decent resolution.

In the XPs registry I only see a couple of entries for HL, although there are more when its running obviously.

 

[rob]

By now, you're probably discussing these various issues directly with Colen via email. However, I'll chime in here with a few important items of note that others may find helpful....

Attempts to install and run Hero Lab via an external drive are generally prone to all sorts of nasty issues. And if you move your external drive between computers, it simply will *not* work successfully. Our licensing mechanism simply does not support that usage model.

The PDF plug-in has many of the same assumptions as Hero Lab itself. So if you've got issues with the PDF plug-in, it's likely due to the same root problems.

There are only ways I can think of that an upgrade will disappear. The first is that you've done something silly, which I've actually seen happen before, so I'll mention it just in case. We've actually had more than one user inadvertently confuse the *installer* as the product itself. So instead of actually launching Hero Lab, they would instead double-click on the installer that was downloaded onto their computer. This resulted in the users believing the Hero Lab needed to be re-installed every time. I'm guessing that's not the case here, but I've seen it before so I'm mentioning it to be safe.

The second possibility is that you've got access privilege issues. I haven't seen this problem since Hero Lab V3.7 was released, but I guess it's possible. The issue stems from installing Hero Lab without Administrator privileges into a location that fundamentally requires Administrator privileges. This can result in Windows "virtualizing" alternate directories for certain files. During installation, all applications are inherently given Administrator privileges, so no virtualization occurs. However, when the product is run, the privileges don't exist, so virtualization occurs and files get mapped to a different location. This can get things very confused, resulting in Hero Lab behaving as if it can't be updated. Since you say you had no problems with V3.7, and this problem should have been completely resolved as of V3.7, I'm guessing this isn't the reason for your problems. But it's the only other option I'm aware of.