Knowledgebase

Symptoms

You have serial keys that require activation, and you do not want users to have to manually activate them.

Cause

PDF-XChange license keys from version 9 need to be activated after they have been applied to a device. Activation must be carried out in the user context and therefore cannot be done by the installer - it must be done by the user and after installation has taken place.

Resolution

Active Directory Group Policy

Apply the "Automatic Key Activation" group policy in the "Key Activation" section of the "Tracker Software Vault" active directory administrative template.

The latest template files are available here. Details on how to use the templates are available here.

Once this policy is activated, the PDF-XChange products will check for and silently activate any unactivated keys.

XCVault Utility

The XCVault utility installed with all PDF-XChange products can be used to silently activate keys in environments that cannot use active directory group policies.

XCVault.exe is installed in C:\Program Files\Tracker Software\Vault and can be called as the user via script. The XCVault utility can be run from either an administrative account (for per-machine licensing actions) or a user account (for per-user licensing actions). Note that activation must be called as the target user, and it requires access to the user's registry (HKCU). Full details on the XCVault options available for V10 are available here.

The XCVault options for activation are:

/ActivateKeys [/S] [/AA]
  Activates installed keys.
Parameters:
  /S           Specifies silent mode and suppresses any messages with information about results.
  /AA        Specifies that currently activated keys will be reused in the activation process.

Examples:

Silently activate all keys present in the current user's registry (previously activated keys will be ignored):

"%ProgramFiles%\Tracker Software\Vault\XCVault.exe" /ActivateKeys /S

Silently activate all keys present in the current user's registry. Previously activated keys will be resent their activation data. This option is useful for reactivating devices that have had their activations removed:

"%ProgramFiles%\Tracker Software\Vault\XCVault.exe" /ActivateKeys /AA /S