INTERNAL: Evaluation licensing error "System Clock has been set back"
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The error 'System Clock has been set back' is occasionally encountered when using a FlexLM evaluation license. This Help Article discusses why the error occurs and how to fix it.
FlexLM evaluation licenses are used by many software companies to allow potential customers to evaluate the full functionality of the software for an allotted amount of time. After the allotted time period, the evaluation license will time out and the software will enter a timed demonstration mode. In order for the FlexLM evaluation license to function over the allotted time, the licensing software needs to determine the current date and time, as reported on the operating system, so that it can estimate the time left for the evaluation period. To do this, FlemLM software will search system and temporary files for date and time stamps, so it is important that the system time is current and accurate. Should FlexLM find files with dates that occur more than 24 hours in the future, the evaluation license will fail, in order to avoid the situation where a user might be trying to defeat a license time-out by setting the system clock to a future date.
In most situations, the system clock shows the current date. However, there will be files found in the system and temporary directories that have dates in the future. The dates can range anywhere from a few days to several years in the future. Most users are completely unaware that these files exist with bad dates and it is often unknown how the files were created with these dates. Perhaps the system clock was set in the future on accident, and some files were installed while it was set.
If these 'files of the future' reside in a temporary directory, they can usually be removed or changed without a problem. Unfortunately, they are often files that reside in protected system directories and can not be altered or removed.
To search for files of the future, go to Start -> Search ->Files or Folder.
Select to 'Search by Date', and select the 'Dates Between'
Set the starting date to be the current date and the ending date to something in the future (several years).
This should return a list of any and all files with dates in the future. If possible, try to alter the date, move the file to another location, or delete it, if necessary and/or possible. If the file(s) reside in a system directory, it might not be possible to delete it. In this case, it might be necessary to perform a 'Repair' of the OS. This should reinstall the system files so that the dates are set to the current date. Then the FlexLM evaluation license should work.