Maxwell Render | Official public forum

Hello,

I have a situation where Maxwell is picking the hostid/mac address of a virtual adapter on my system, and this adapter changes its mac address with each reboot, so my licneses are invalidated (node-locked learning edition). I confirmed this by looking in the console window in Maxwell, and comparing the hostid it reports to the mac address reported by the output of running 'ipconfig /all', and finding a match on one of my virtual adapters I use for vpn.

Is there a way I can force Maxwell to use the hostid of my physical (hardware) ethernet adapter?

Thanks!
Kyle McKisic

Hello Kyle,

What you could do is, in the step where the license activator asks you:
- I want to activate the license on this computer now (needs internet connection)
- I want to activate the license on another computer not connected to the internet.

Choose the second option here in your case, which will allow you to manually enter a hostID.

Enter the hostID that you want (the one of your real adapter which you found using ipconfig).

The activator will then pop up a save dialog, and you can save this .lic file in the usual folder (C:\ProgramData\Next Limit\Maxwell\licenses).

Hi Mihai,

thanks for the response. Unfortunately, that doesn't work because Maxwell is picking up the first adapter in the list as the hostid, and does not appear to be querying all available adapters and trying to find a match. So it's an issue of ordering the local adapters such that the first one in the list is a hardware adapter and not a virtual one and the mac address will remain the same across reboots, etc.

Fortunately, I found a way to do this! Here's the solution:

1. Go to: Control Panel | Network and Sharing Center
2. Click Change Adapter Settings
3. Right click on a non-virtual adapter and choose Properties
4. Select IPV4 from the list and then click Properties
5. Click Advanced...
6. In the IP Settings tab, uncheck 'Automatic Metric' at the bottom of the pane
7. Type in the number '1' in the Interface Metric box
8. Click OK to back out of the chain of dialogs

To confirm this worked, you can open a command prompt and type in 'ipconfig /all' and you should see that adapter listed first in the output. This will now be the adapter that Maxwell picks up on and you can license against.

Cheers,
Kyle

kmckisic wrote:Unfortunately, that doesn't work because Maxwell is picking up the first adapter in the list as the hostid,

But that is precisely why I suggested you should choose the second option in the license activator It lets you manually specify a hostID. You write it in the text field. Then the activator simply creates a license file, with that hostID in it. Once this license file is saved on your disk, you're set.

hmm .. thought I tried that, but possible I borked it. I appreciate the help!

Cheers,
Kyle