Reactivate a Perpetual License
When a stand-alone Autodesk product is installed for the first time on a computer, the license must be activated for it to work beyond its trial period. If you have a perpetual license, reactivation is required when the previous activation of the product is somehow invalidated on the computer on which it is installed.
Note for Subscription Customers: License transfer from one computer to another is not required to activate your subscription software on a new computer. Your subscription to Autodesk software includes rights to install and activate your software on more than one computer. For each computer you wish to use, follow the standard installation and activation procedures for your software. Refer to your Software License Agreement for more information about software usage rights.
Reasons to Reactivate
An activation can be invalidated for the following reasons:
- Significantly changing the primary boot disk
- Changing too many hardware components at once (hard drive, graphics card, RAM, NIC, etc.)
- Modifying the activation services or the software license files
- Modifying the system date or time properties on a computer that has a time-limited software license
- Reinstalling your operating system
- Using the License Transfer Utility to export a license from a computer and then trying to run that product on the same computer
- Installing from a hard disk image, created using Ghost or another cloning software package, where the original Master Boot Record was included in the image
- Your subscription or maintenance plan has expired
How to Manually Reactivate
When an activation is invalidated the license will attempt to silently and automatically reactivate. If it cannot automatically reactivate, or if automatic reactivation has happened too many times over a certain period of months (over-activation), you will be prompted to manually reactivate the product.
Reactivation requires the same steps and information as initial activation of the product.
If reactivation is triggered by an expired subscription or maintenance plan, your software should prompt you to enter a new serial number upon startup. You do not need to reinstall your Autodesk software to reactivate with a new serial number.
See: Updating Your Serial Number Without Reinstalling Your Software
To prevent a break in your product license when changing hardware, use the License Transfer Utility to export your license before making the change. After the hardware change, use the License Transfer Utility again to import the license file back to the machine.
Still Need Help?
If you need assistance activating your software, contact Autodesk and provide information about why additional activations are required.
