Locked out of Xara DP11 once again!

[hseiken]

I wish Xara would adopt ReNoise's copy protection policy:

They have a server side patcher that, when you download the full version from their site, it patches the code with all of your information scattered through out algorithmically. If they ever find a pirated version floating around with your info on it, you get your license revoked. Also, if other people install it, it also has your name coded inside of it on the start up screen too.

I really don't like online policies. In America, at least, the internet is still not widespread enough to a lot of places to even think about requiring an offline program to be online to use. I have this issue with some android stuff as well: I have a tablet that only has half of the programs working unless I'm at home, which makes it useless for travel to me if my drawing programs and such won't work without wifi.

[Oops]

Hi Phil. I'd be interested to hear about your experiences with Xara's new DRM. Can you summarise what triggered the three lock-outs you've had so far? I too am very sceptical of the approach Xara have adopted and it causing me to re-consider my purchase of DP11.

[Acorn]

Hi Phil. I'd be interested to hear about your experiences with Xara's new DRM. Can you summarise what triggered the three lock-outs you've had so far? I too am very sceptical of the approach Xara have adopted and it causing me to re-consider my purchase of DP11.

Oops, Phil's experiences are already well documented. The DRM is not new, we have experienced it for a few versions. Phil's mishaps may be down to something specific to his set-up. In all my year's of using Xara products, I have only had one problem over a malformed licence number and I was given a new one within hours. Part of the bad press Xara seems to gain is as they are UK-based and working office hours, time zone differences seem to sucker punch its responsiveness. I have yet to hear of someone totally left high and dry. Those who get into difficulty come here and usually someone has enough experience to assist.

Simple tip: in buying a Xara product, download all the same versioned trials but don't run them. Keep them in reserve if you main application blows. You then have a fall-back for the period of the trial's duration.

Acorn

[Oops]

Hello Acorn,

I gathered Phil's experiences are already documented on Talk Graphics from how he wrote his OP. I thought Phil might be able to give a quick summary, and I expect he might be glad to.

Whether or not problems are wider spread is of no interest to me.

[Acorn]

Hello Acorn, I gathered Phil's experiences are already documented on Talk Graphics from how he wrote his OP. I thought Phil might be able to give a quick summary, and I expect he might be glad to.
Whether or not problems are wider spread is of no interest to me.

Oops, you appear to have a singular view on how a community forum works. People communicate a problem or experience. They get help or comment and everyone gains.
Acorn

[jaydear]

I think I just accidentally gained an insight into this "lock-out" phenomenon. I have just added a new upmarket wifi router to my network because the one inside my isp's modem/router was not working properly any more. The original internal wifi router kept the wired lan ip addresses and the wifi ip addresses in the one address range, e.g. 10.1.1.1 to 10.1.1.254. The new external router only connects to the original wired lan ip address range to gain access to the wired lan and to the internet and occupies one of the 10.1.1.xxx addresses to do so. It then doles out new ip addresses in a different address range, e.g. 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.254 to all the phones, tablets, computers, etc. that connect to it by wifi. I sincerely hope you are not all glazing over yet, it gets more interesting now.

Anyhow, I just tried to start up XDP11 and I was shocked when the screen asking if I had changed my equipment came up for the first time ever. Note that the ONLY thing I have changed recently is the addition today of an external router which, as I have explained above, puts my pc on a different ip address range if I connect by wifi. Also note that I have changed my hard disc for a Samsung SSD some months ago and that that rather major change caused absolutely no problem with my XDP11 license. I call it a major change because all the data off the old mechanical hard disc was transferred across to the new SSD and the locations of data such as secreted registration codes would definitely have changed in the process. Note that I had used XDP11 yesterday without incident.

I realised that I was connecting by wifi (which I don't usually do on this pc) because I had just been doing some setup of the new router and that procedure has to be done inside it's ip range, not the modem's ip range. I decided that I would not proceed with Xara's re-registration procedure being aware of the mess that Phill and others seem to have been caught up in. So I declined Xara's dialogue which also terminated startup of XDP11 and I then turned off my pc's wifi. Now this is where it got v-e-r-y interesting! I did not restart my pc or do anything else except start XDP11 which proceeded to open up quite normally and without any intervention by Xara

So it looks to me as though Xara include your local ip address range in their check for equipment change. I probably do not have to tell you how stupid that is and if I am right about this, it needs to be removed from Xara's bona fide checking without further delay. IP address ranges are a dynamic thing, especially on portable pc's that can be expected to be connecting to many networks with unknown address ranges. Xara have absolutely no right to inconvenience any legitimate user who happens to connect their Xara-registered pc to various networks, either wifi or wired. It's the pc that's registered, not the network it is connected to. If I am right about this, Xara have made a HUGE mistake in their program code and have caused a great deal of stress to Phill and others!

[Luke.Hart]

It could well be that it's the MAC address of the internet connection that is different and not the IP address. I very much don't think anyone would use the IP address as machine specific information, not least because 99.9% of machines will be in the same range.

[handrawn]

I've noticed this in the past with XDP10

And I am not sure it is the IP - I think it is doing a check on the xara server which fails when connected and does not fail when not - when this happened to me my IP was dynamic not static and had been so fora long time; also I changed wi-fi routers twice, once as a result of changing ISP

I sorted it by going back to a saved system image which included activated xara - there was then no problem [the IP continuing to be dynamic]

don't know why it suddenly decided to do this, and since moving to XDP11 it has not happened so far

[Rob-Xar]

Can confirm, it's not based on your IP but interesting steps you took.

[pauland]

Well, whatever it is, Xara should be asking if the case is truly repeatable and if so, replicate it in-house and fix it.