3CX VAD not accepting license

[livn46]

We have a working 3CX Phone System installation (about 500 extensions) that we just upgraded to v12.5, and after upgrading, when I open VAD it says that the license is not activated, and I'm working under the limitations of the free edition. When I go to the VAD Activate License window and put in the relevant information, it gives me the error "An error occurred trying to activate your license. License Key Is In Use Already License 27 68 System 2 0". It worked previously, back when we set the whole thing up back in v11: I'm trying to fix a project that we created back then and re-deploy it.

I did follow the steps described here: http://www.3cx.com/blog/docs/license-key-already-in-use/, which looked hopeful, but it did not seem to affect the issue: same message afterward. I then took out the current license key from the active phone system, re-entered all the information and re-validated the license, and re-started the phone services, but it didn't change VAD's behavior. The problem is similar to what was described here: http://www.3cx.com/forums/urgent-licence-not-valid-after-upgrading-3cx-to-12-5-40949.html but he says that re-validating the license fixed the issue. It didn't for us.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

 

[VAD_Support]

Hi there,

In first place, let me say that the VAD does support 3CX v12.5 using the installer from here:
https://downloads-global.3cx.com/downloads/3CXCallFlowDesigner.exe (new link for v15.5)

Then, regarding the license issue, you're in the right track when checking this article:
https://www.3cx.com/blog/docs/license-key-already-in-use/

But please note that the article above was created for the 3CX Phone System license key. The VAD saves the key in a different registry location, so instead of looking in:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\3CX\PhoneSystem
or
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\3CX\PhoneSystem

You need to look into:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\3CX\VAD
or
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\3CX\VAD

Into that registry location you will find 2 values:
- 3CXVAD
- Signature

The third value that you need to delete from the registry (the long string, like: “oxpqcvcsaydnkmmxmrmzgxbvplhlkxhp”) is into the PhoneSystem path, even for the VAD. But please pay attention because if the VAD is installed in the same server than 3CX, then you will have 2 values in that registry key, one for 3CX Phone System and another one for the VAD. You can't know which one you need to delete, so if this is your case, try renaming the value instead of deleting it, so you can revert it back if the correct value was the other one.

Hope the information helps and please let me know if you get it working following the described procedure.

Thanks.

 

[livn46]

Thanks for your response.

I did see that the VAD had a registry subkey right next to the phone system one, and I tried deleting the two keys in the VAD subkey once, and restored them when it didn't make a difference. However, I hadn't tried deleting both of them AND the long string key in Phone System.

When I look at the random string registry key, it's just a block of binary data, and I don't see a way to tell if there's 2 values there or not. Do you mean that there should be 2 entirely different longrandomstring registry keys? Because I see only one. Picture is attached.

 

[VAD_Support]

Yes, you should have 1 random large string for each license key activated. In your case, one for 3CX Phone System and another for the VAD.

Maybe you can try deleting the value you have and follow the procedure for both 3CX Phone System and the VAD, and then re-activate both licenses.

Also maybe you can delete/rename the license bin file. For the VAD it is located at "C:\ProgramData\3CX Voice Application Designer\License\VADLicense.bin".

Kind regards.

 

[livn46]

I have already removed and re-activated the license for the phone system just yesterday, so I'm nervous about doing that again: I'm worried about breaking the system while it's actively being used. I assume from what you wrote that the long string registry key is the license for the phone system, since that was just input yesterday. Additionally, when I looked for the License bin file that you referenced, it isn't there: the folder C:\ProgramData\3CX Voice Application Designer\License is empty. To me this sounds like the VAD license hasn't been activated at all, but if so, why does it think there's a duplicate?

 

[VAD_Support]

OK, so pretty sure the string you have belongs to 3CX Phone System. In that case you should be able to activate the VAD license again. If you still have problems with this, please open a support ticket so we make a remote TeamViewer session and check it out.

Kind regards.

 

[livn46]

I'm embarrassed at what the problem was, but I'll record it in case anyone else has the same problem in the future. I hadn't realized that we received two different license keys, one for the phone system and one for the VAD. I was trying to activate the VAD with the license key already used by the phone system. My boss had the email from our reseller, and when he gave me the VAD license key contained in the email, it activated without a problem.