Ok, enough is enough (Error L055 again)

Discussion in 'Prevx Releases' started by yamaneko, Jul 3, 2010.

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  1. shadek

    shadek Registered Member

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    Agreed. Joe and their support is top-notch. Best guys on the market. Period.

    But the strict license policy is utter crap.
     
  2. Dermot7

    Dermot7 Registered Member

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    Maybe I'm missing how the licence works here, but I can't understand why Prevx, especially being an online/cloud community based system cannot, apparantly, recognise that there is only one activation occuring at any given time, using a specific licence key? Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe and trust
    Prevx is excellent in virtually all "departments", but it can't be good and it's not
    nice to see good paying, enthusiastic users, having irritating and potentially reputation-damaging(for Prevx) issues with the licence.
    I hope Prevx might consider an early change to the licence system.
     
  3. PrevxHelp

    PrevxHelp Former Prevx Moderator

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    The main issue with the licensing system at the moment is that the license is tied to an operating system installation rather than a complete map to the physical PC. There are some considerations to both approaches, and no software product that wishes to remain profitable can have either a completely loose policy or too tight of one.

    One of the main issues with why Prevx has more trouble than some other companies is that we charge for cleanup as being one of the focal point. Most other companies charge significant sums of money to clean a PC where Prevx guarantees cleanup always. When we had a looser licensing system, we saw massive abuse from people cleaning other PCs as a service and getting paid for it.

    That being said, we saw a few instances of licenses being dropped or having the license change on the fly, which we're currently looking into. If anyone randomly sees an L055 error and has not changed their PC, please let me know. It may be helpful to uninstall and reinstall to see if this fixes it, but we will be changing the licensing system in Prevx 4, which should allow us to better prevent this from happening.

    As always, send me your license key if you have not signed up for MyPrevx or have any problems :) if I can't respond directly, one of our support staff will be able to assist if needed.

    Let me know if you have any questions!
     
  4. shadek

    shadek Registered Member

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    When I went to bed at 00:55 AM, Prevx was running perfectly fine. I left my computer on. Now, at this morning... I'm confronted with the good old error L055, again. I had my key manually reset and nothing have been changed since then (over 3 weeks ago). Nothing's been done with the computer since I used it 9 hours ago.
     

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  5. shadek

    shadek Registered Member

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    Updated to version .189 because I knew it'd work. And so it did. But still, this error are annoying. I've been getting it randomly (about once every 10 startup). Is there no way to get this bug erradicated?


    EDIT: Dear god. Now at reboot, I get the same problem...


    EDIT: This is the end. I made a clean uninstall and re-install. When I enter my key I get the same error message. It's so frustrating with this whole reg-system. I can't have problems like this all the time.
     
    Last edited: Sep 12, 2010
  6. PrevxHelp

    PrevxHelp Former Prevx Moderator

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    Could you please send the file c:\programdata\prevxcsi\csidb.csi to report@prevxresearch.com so that we can take a closer look at your installation? That might shed some light as to what is happening - sorry for the inconvenience!
     
  7. shadek

    shadek Registered Member

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    As my update signature suggests, I no longer run Prevx on my system. That location is no longer available on my computer. :(

    EDIT 1: I'll try to re-install Prevx with the same key. We'll see what happens. I'll report back in a minute or two.

    EDIT 2: The installations seems to work fine now. I'll report back any problems. My point still stands though; the license system seriously needs an overhaul. One more problem with it, and the application is gone. :(
     
    Last edited: Sep 12, 2010
  8. PrevxHelp

    PrevxHelp Former Prevx Moderator

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    (I'll just respond here to save jumping between multiple threads :))

    We've been having quite a few discussions about licensing internally and indeed it is not a simple conversation to have. Reformatting a PC at the moment will cause your license to break, so will installing another operating system and using it on the same physical PC. We have to handle numerous conditions (terminal servers, virtual machines, cloned operating systems, multiple operating systems, reformatted PCs, and then of course, people who are trying to steal our licenses [the last of which happens more frequently than all of the others combined]) and all of these factors end up resulting in a very detailed conversation. Prevx 3 has measures in place already but there simply is not a 100% solution to all of the problems at the moment, so while we've reduced our licensing complaints significantly recently, we're well aware that there still is room for improvement.

    However, in your case, I'm going to err on the side of there being a legitimate software issue on your PC within Prevx. I've seen this ~3 times - because of how Prevx detects the current machine's configuration, it is possible that, due to a failure in the synchronization of a few services in Windows (namely lsass and one of the svchosts), Prevx could end up getting a completely incorrect identifier.

    This is admittedly extremely rare but one of our internal web developers actually did see it a few months ago... but it never came back. From what you've been describing, I'd tend to think you could be running into this scenario and if so, we'd certainly be very interested in trying to fix it.

    If not, I can provide you with a changed license key which is hardened against this - I wasn't aware you were still having a problem as it seemed like it was resolved, but this is indeed a stray and odd issue to try to find specifically.

    If you're interested in looking further, please PM me your license and I'll send you instructions if anything breaks again - I'd certainly never want any user to waste a single day of their license key if there is something we could fix on our end.

    If anyone else also sees their license randomly getting an L055 without making any hardware changes please let me know - we are very interested in finding the source of this :)
     
  9. shadek

    shadek Registered Member

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    Firstly, as always, the support from Prevx is top-notch.

    Secondly, if I were to ask you to look into my license problems, you'd find the computer names on each new installations extremely similar to each other, hence, the probability of me moving on from computer to computer (i.e. installing on friends computers to help their infections troubles) would be doubtful.

    Thirdly, I do test new malware each day and run under Returnil or Shadow Defender; and after restarts after infections, the problem is more likely to show up.

    I do understand that dealing with license system is a problematic issue. Who uses my hardworked devoloped software illegaly? Who abuse 'moving on from computer to computer'? These are natural and valid questions to a company that wants no money to go to unauthorized users. I understand this! Rest assured, I am definately not one of them. I am certain there must be others like me on this forum who tends to try out new softwares. And after too many software installations feel the need to re-install Windows again just to get it clean and smooth-running. I've taken measures against this and learned from my mistakes; I take weekly images of my C: partition. Yet, after resets, I experienced the problem. Therefore I made the conclusion that the license-system is flawed somehow. I do not doubt that you trust me, as I've had two remote sessions with you concerning the Chrome issues with v5.

    However, I wish there was a way to bind the Prevx license to, perhaps, the motherboard (hardware) rather than the OS. It would seem a lot more logical. I do not know if this is the problem I am/was experiencing or if it was an actual bug.

    I am currently running Prevx again along with NAV 2011. Please note that I haven't rebooted yet so I'm not sure the problem will re-appeaer. It's working as of the moment, but time will tell. I know you'll change the license system with Prevx 4, but I do not know in which way. I just hope problems like these will vanish. I simply cannot have my system's security exposed to threats, as my girlfriend and her relatives use this computer and I have very important information on it.

    Regards,

    Gabriel


    EDIT: I even ditched Look N Stop in hope this would solve problems. But I know TripleHelix has about the same setup as I, and I've not seen him having the same issues. Even after ditching LnS (which potentially could block access to lsass or svhost), I had the problem.
     
    Last edited: Sep 12, 2010
  10. PrevxHelp

    PrevxHelp Former Prevx Moderator

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    This is one of the ways that we're looking to use in the future, but even this isn't perfect. For example, many companies use Terminal Servers or virtual machines for their environment. These effectively create hundreds of workstations on one physical PC, which could say that a company that is scanning millions of files and should be paying for hundreds/thousands of Prevx licenses is actually only using a single one when tied to hardware.

    We definitely know you aren't abusing the system which is why we'd like to fix it on our end :) If you do run into any problem again, could you let us know what/if any changes you made and then just send me your license key? I can set a flag in our database which will let you use it much easier.

    Prevx 4 will have significant licensing changes. One of the areas that we're trialing in Prevx 3 is hardware identification as you've mentioned. This allows us to identify PCs with operating systems on different partitions and still identify a PC after reformatting. However, this doesn't cover the Terminal Servers case I mentioned above, and it doesn't cover virtual machines/cloned PCs. There is quite a lot to weigh and factor in when implementing these systems and unfortunately there isn't a perfect solution that we've seen at the moment.
     
  11. Triple Helix

    Triple Helix Specialist

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    Hi Gabriel,

    I just want to make a comment about LNS and Prevx as they work very well for me without problems on both Win 7 32bit & 64bit! ;)

    Daniel
     
  12. shadek

    shadek Registered Member

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    I am very glad for both of your answers. :) I'll report if I get the same problem again. I look forward to Prevx 4!
     
  13. Soultear

    Soultear Registered Member

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    Interesting......I too have got this error.

    Installed programs before error, game shadow; BF2142+patches;java update and M$ patches;Adobe flash update.
     
  14. shadek

    shadek Registered Member

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    Prevx 4 will surely be the salvation to our re-occurring problems with the licenses. :D
     
  15. yamaneko

    yamaneko Registered Member

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    How can you be sure of it?
     
  16. shadek

    shadek Registered Member

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    Joe has personally informed us they'll use some other licence method which should work better. The current licence-system is quite a joke really. I am the customer and not my computer. I should be able to re-install Windows along with Prevx as many times as I'd like to as long as it's on the same computer, without being bothered to contact the support every time. I'll have to give the Prevx support some credit though, there's never a problem.
     
  17. CJsDad

    CJsDad Registered Member

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    Very well put. Agree with you 110%
     
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