Recovery of lost licence: BobCAM can not help V2 owners

Unfortunately, I experienced a hard disk failure recently and despite having a backup could not retrieve the licence for my Solidworks .BobCAM
I first noted the change when it launched into Demo mode.

Fortunately the BobCAD representative had just gone to the trouble of contacting me to see if I was in the market for the V5. It is something may have considered. However, I asked him to help me with the original registration.

This was their reply to my request for help.

My name is John Kelly i am with Bobcad, I am sad to inform you that we no longer support V2 for SolidWorks so getting you those registration codes is impossible for me. What i can do for you is, Since you are not on supported software you qualify for a special we have going on. For only $850.00 USD i can get you upgraded to V5.

Originally I bought the BobCAM package on line and did not see any codes for it to run.

Very disappointed, very disillusioned with BobCAD, very suspicious of why the rep contacted me ??

License ID and password should be on your invoice. V2 was a mid 2011 release date and V3 became availabe January 2013 according to my records. I would think they should be able to provide a copy of your original invoice at 4 years old if you cant find yours. In my opinion the V3 and even more so V4 upgrades provided major enhancements. V4 especially so if you have the pro version.

The cynic in me suggests that they can provide a license code but would rather sell you something more.

I am very suspicious like you. One thing that freaks me out is the fact they they had been offering me the V5 recently and I have had no need to contact them for years. Is it some smart software that is meant to die if you use a recovery procedure.
Who would have thought volkwagen would have had nerve to use "cheat" software on car emissions but they did because they could get away with it. Is BobCAM playing a similar game.? Is the problem just leverage on me to pay $850 ( discounted they say ) to buy the upgrade. On the licence registration issue, they know I am a V2 user and should be supporting me in my problem. I wonder how may people keep invoices for nearly six years?

I agree with you that they are honour bound to help me out. Nobody sensible would like the negative comment's likely to arise for exposure on furums.
They wish to ignore my request.

BobCAD were quite plain in their unambiguous response. After all, John Kelly is their International national Business Manager and he should know what the company policy is :- "we no longer support V2 for SolidWorks.
I am a small scale user. I can not afford the best so bought BobCAD. I probably would not have bought it if I knew it was life limited. Has anyone got "SolidCam" they are not using?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 3D-companions

I agree with you that they are honour bound to help me out. Nobody sensible would like the negative comment's likely to arise for exposure on furums.
They wish to ignore my request.

BobCAD were quite plain in their unambiguous response. After all, John Kelly is their International national Business Manager and he should know what the company policy is :- "we no longer support V2 for SolidWorks.
I am a small scale user. I can not afford the best so bought BobCAD. I probably would not have bought it if I knew it was life limited. Has anyone got "SolidCam" they are not using?

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Not sure where you are coming from here, as "jmullett" rightly said your License and Password info is on the Invoice that they email to customers so you should be able to find the old email at least. You must have had that Invoice otherwise you couldn`t have activated the V2 software originally. So get searching amongst your old paperwork and emails :D :D

None of the BobCAD software is "time" or "life" limited, once you have the software it works forever, just like Windows XP Pro that many millions of people still use that is also no longer supported by Microsoft, doesn`t stop it working though :D Just because it isn`t "supported" doesn`t meant they wouldn`t still have that info ! !

What kind of backup did you have ? For your reference you should backup to a different HDD using something like Acronis or similar that creates an "image" of your HDD that can be simply re-loaded onto a new HDD and you are back to where you were :D

As for not keeping Invoices the HMRC (Her Magestys Revenue and Customs) require us all in the UK to keep all Invoices for at least 6 years, that`s how far back they can go :( :(

Not super helpful I know but have you tried contacting BobCAD Registration Dept ? They will almost certainly have the details of any transaction you have ever made with the company for sure :D

Sorry I don`t have any more for you :(

Regards
Rob
:rainfro: :rainfro: :rainfro:

The problem is that if you need to install your copy of bobcad on a new install of windows, or new pc, you need to contact tech support to deactivate the old copy, and generate a new license. It sounds like they will no longer generate a license key for that version.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MikeC8

The problem is that if you need to install your copy of bobcad on a new install of windows, or new pc, you need to contact tech support to deactivate the old copy, and generate a new license. It sounds like they will no longer generate a license key for that version.

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I had difficulty when my laptop HDD failed with my activated copy of V25 on board, even after I offered to post in my failed hard drive the tech who sorted out activation for me was a bit shirty in explaining he would do it this once but I would have to de-activate my existing copy for any future activation, it's like he didn't understand what "failed hard drive" meant!
This encounter has prompted me to keep a tested booting and working image of my machine on a new spare HDD with an image file also stored on my NAS to avoid future encounters with activation staff.
My neighbor has offered me a spare rack mount server on which to run a machine virtualisation platform, I might give that a go,

- Nick

I believe there's a site called thepiratebay or something which is really good for making very, very redundant and resilient backups of software when manufacturers are being ****-heels about things like licence migration when your machine dies.

I wouldn't advise the download or install of any dodgy or pirated software, the distributors aren't philanthropists, they're criminals, it's usually used as a vehicle to sneak things onto your machine which you wouldn't want.

- Nick

No, I was talking about uploading it as a backup that would never die - a reasonable course of action if the consequences of losing it were so serious. :)

RAID 5 hot-swap NAS isn't that expensive these days if you shop around, back up to external HDD, optical media and a NAS box and you're fine, I'm a little paranoid and have my Raid 5 NAS box back itself up to another hardware identical unit with different brands of drives ;-)

- Nick

I was being facetious, promise :)

Personally I use a removeable backup drive running with some scripts that backup incrementally every hour, that way if I do summink stupid I've only lost an hour's work. I swap the drive with another one kept at my parents' place when I visit every couple of weeks so, if the house burns down or gets knocked off, the most I've lost is two weeks. If something big enough happens to take out my house and the parents' which is 20km away I reckon I'll have bigger concerns to deal with than a lost license or two!

It doesn't help you now but for the remainder of the people watching this thread, as others have pointed out, removable storage is at cost levels so low it's just ridiculous, so even the smallest home user should have backups, even if it's just their photos.

I deal with an awful lot of data recovery situations, and I'm always astounded by the massive amount of "critical" data accumulated by users, but it only ever exists on one target, which inevitably dies, or far more commonly gets corrupted or deleted accidentally.

Another good thing to do is to use utilities like ghost or similar that can clone an entire hard drive, and allow a full restoration. You can also get utilities to change NIC MAC's and system ID's for those pesky license checking apps that bind to a generated system ID in the event of restoring to a new drive.

cheers, Ian