Problem with using generatecomputerid.exe

[RGSchmidt]

I am using the generateComputerId.exe executable supplied by License Manager
and have found that the Id's generated are not unique. I have 2 machines that
generate the same Id and another pair the generate another common Id. I have 5
machines and only 3 common Id's. For each machine that generates a common Id,
the software installed on the machine is different as shown by the local
licenses in License manager.

I thought each Id was supposed to be unique based on either the MAC address or
the hard drive serial number.

NI Software :  generateComputerId.exe
NI Hardware :  None
OS :  Windows 7

[TheNIDragon]

Hello RGSchmidt,

Thanks for posting! You are correct that the computer ID should be related to the MAC address of the machine you are using so I am also surprised that you are getting duplicates. Just out of curiousity, does the computer ID generated from generateComputerId.exe match the computer ID you get from going into NI License Manager and clicking Show Computer Information? Also, just to make sure we're focusing on the right issue; are you running into any issues with activating any of your software?

Regards,

Collin D.

Applications Engineering

[RGSchmidt]

Doing a Display Computer Id from within License Manager which calls generate computerize.exe yields the same results. We are not having any trouble registering software.

We use the generatecomputerid.exe application as part of validating computers in our test system with the server so having multiple computers with the same I'd causes bad data as to where the client request originated.

[TheNIDragon]

Hello RGSchmidt,

This is probably due to identical serial numbers on the hard drives of the different computers you are working with (the NI-generated computer ID is based on both the MAC address and the disk ID). Looking through some past service requests, it looks like it is possible to change the disk ID, reboot the system, and get a new computer ID. It looks like this program from Microsoft should allow you to do that:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897436.aspx

Let me know if that works for you.