Issue case:
One of our customer report to us that the license (2018) failed to activate, and we checked that the license is OK to be activated at our side. Customer can go the whole process, and online activation is no problem (can log on the flexnet portal), but when click ok to finish the activation, it says activate failed, then the license log viewer says:
We also tried to send the independent stand-alone license manager that from zwcad 2012 to help activate the license, but the license seems activated (both on this tool and flexnet info), but when start 2018, still pops out the activation window, and you can input license code to start the activation, still failed.
Solution:
We go to check the flexnet licensing service according to the license log viewer, and found there are both 32bit and 64bit services as below figure shown (32bit is not started)
Then we try to start it, and then find that the issue works out, everything goes well.
Normally, the service will be started automatically and smartly according to which program (32bit or 64bit) you are running to do the activation, however, sometimes it doesn't work normal way, so when the log viewer message tells us about this information, then just try to start both services or switch them to test, maybe many strange issues will be solved by this way.