License check failed due to invalid system date. (SOLVED)

[wphred]

This is the error I get when trying to enter Alibre Design. It was working perfectly yesterday. The error screen had an EXIT icon and a question mark icon. Clicking on the question mark I did as suggested. I verified I had the correct date, then toggled to a different time zone and back, but got the same error. Nothing else was suggested.

I have submitted a ticket to support, but thought I would try the forum while waiting for a response. I have seen similar errors reported on the forum and tried other suggestions with no luck.

Any suggestions?

 

[wphred]

The issue was with the system clock. I have a dual booted system; MX Linux on one hard drive, and Windows 11 on the other. Linux uses UTC for the system clock, and Windows uses RTC. Although I had no difficulties before (since September 2023) the system time difference between the two OS's created the issue now.

David Jepp from support set me on the right path. Changing the registry in Windows to use UTC and deleting contents in an Alibre folder (had to renter activation key) fixed everything.

Response from support was very fast. Submitted a ticket last night and when I woke up this morning, the response was there. Very impressive customer support!! My thanks to the support team.

 

[DavidJ]

This is something we see from time to time - a 'back-time counter' is incremented for each occasion an implausible date/time is encountered. So it may take several such events before the limit value is reached and the software won't run. It is then necessary to re-set the licence activation (and to fix the cause of the date/time mismatch).

Can also be caused by incorrect time zone settings, unreliable NTP server, etc.