Dear Sir,
After going back through my notes I believe I understand what has happened.
When I received the original license file for version 5.4 it was delivered via email with a .txt file extension and the License Manager would not add the license to the registry. I suspected that the obviously binary file was processed as a text file somewhere along the way and guessed some line feed characters were changed or something of that nature. I opened up the license file in a hex editor and found that the entire license file was character encoded with Unicode or perhaps UTF-8. Having a pressing need for a valid license I tried to do the expedient thing and attempted to manually decode the license file back into its original form.
The license manager happily accepted the file after my changes and was showing the license as "ACTIVE". So, I patted myself on the back for a job well done avoiding a one week bureaucratic delay in obtaining a corrected license file. Meanwhile, the license manager is happily showing the license information as "ACTIVE" while the license checks in the actual code obviously disagree and silently fall back to "trial" mode.
I have attached the original .txt version of the license file I received as well as my "corrected" "bin" version, along with the PDF file I also received with the original license file.
Before we go digging around looking for other causes can you please check to make sure that the corrected license file is actually valid, and if not, can you please re-send a uncorrupted original with a ".dat" or similar file extension?
If you find that the file is actually valid, here are my responses to your questions:
1. Which operating system are you running on?
A: Windows 7
2. Is it a 64-bit or 32-bit system? -
A: 32-bit
3. How do you install the license - is it always using the License Manager, or do you have your own process - such as an installation program that includes this step?
A: I have tried both ways with the same result. The custom code I use to create the necessary registry keys has worked without fail with previous licenses and the entries made by that code have been verified to be a byte-for-byte copy of the entries which the 5.4 version of the license manager creates.
4. Can you please run one of the Demo applications that come with the product, and see if they have the same issue?
A: I'll try and will let you know.
5. I am concerned about your formulation "I downloaded the latest and greatest version which bought me some trial time ...". Just downloading and installing the product is not sufficient to upgrade your program. Have you also re-built your application with the new assemblies?
A: Yes. I verified that the GAC was free of any previous versions of the client library assemblies. The project was cleaned, the debug directory removed, and the application rebuilt.
6. The application shown on the image - is that you own application? I am puzzled about the "BadInternalErrorReceivedExceptionFromOpcClient" text in the Quality, as this is not any of the OPC qualities. Do you somehow you the Quality field for indication of such problems? Or does the information displayed in the yellow box come from a difference system that in turn connects to OPC servers (that is, is the QuickOPC component actually part of the application that displays the error, or is the architecture more complicated than that - in that case, can you explain how this works?).
A: Yes, that is my own application. The error message you see is the result of my application's logic alone. If an exception occurs while using the client library, I set the OPC "Bad" quality bit along with one of the vendor-specific OPC quality bits. The text you are puzzled about is the enumeration of that specific OPC quality value. The UI code looks for that specific OPC quality and knows to add the stored exception information to the tooltip so I can easily see what is causing a value to be bad be it a server set OPC quality issue, or an exception being caught while processing the value. I just piggy-backed on the OPC quality for convenience.
Thanks!
Alan
