"Your license file does not contain a Username or Password."

[ITHoneyBadger 0]

On a side note, before getting this info here, an uninstall failed from Control Panel on a 7 machine and a system restore got the machine back to pre update state.

[Marcos 5,070]

57 minutes ago, ITHoneyBadger said:

ESET needs to step up and get this sorted ASAP, manual Safe Mode uninstall is not something we have the resources for even on 40 machines.

I can assure you that the issue is being treated with highest priority at ESET. Currently it appears that the most reliable way of resolving the issue is by deactivating the affected units from the ELA portal and re-activating them. We are currently testing a newer version of Endpoint 6.6 which will prevent this issue.

For now I'd postpone upgrade to Endpoint 6.6 (upgrade to v6.5. is safe) until we release the new version. We believe that the issue can be worked around by not selecting a license while creating a software install task but this has not been confirmed to be a 100% solution yet. Theoretically that should do the trick as in such case no deactivation and reactivation during upgrade should be performed and therefore there's no reason for the issue to manifest.

[ITHoneyBadger 0]

Thanks Marcos, we tried deactivation based on the notes here but still have the issue. As others have pointed out some of these systems show good on the console while they are not.

We anxiously await a fix!

[TheSkymanDC 4]

Marcos - I've just deactivated 9 computers in the ELA portal.  When do I activate them in the ERA portal?

[Marcos 5,070]

3 minutes ago, TheSkymanDC said:

Marcos - I've just deactivated 9 computers in the ELA portal.  When do I activate them in the ERA portal?

You can reactivate clients from ERA for instance, by sending a Product activation task.

[TheSkymanDC 4]

Right - but when?  Do I wait for the computers to show "not activated" in ERA?  None of them are currently showing that message.

 

[Marcos 5,070]

3 minutes ago, TheSkymanDC said:

Right - but when?  Do I wait for the computers to show "not activated" in ERA?  None of them are currently showing that message.

Endpoint should deactivate within 5 minutes after being deactivated in ELA. It may take another minute until ERA Agent connects to ERAS and reports Endpoint as not activated in the console.

[ITHoneyBadger 0]

My deactivated system showed up immediately in ERA, ran the activation job and activation failed on the client.  If I manually run updates on the client it sits there checking and doesn't finish.

The only working option was a system rollback.  However that across all our affected systems means alot of downtime for productive users and a couple weeks IT busy work, we simply dont have that option at this time.

[TheSkymanDC 4]

OK - it's been over 1 hour.  1 computer is offline.  I computer has shown "Product is not activated" and been successfully activated.

The other 7 computers continue to check in but do not show as needing activation.

Any ideas?

 

[cmit 2]

ESET Support,
Could you create a solution that can uninstall or upgrade ESET WITHOUT having to RESTART the computer?
If the upgrade failed or a re-installation is necessary, having to restart to safe mode then run the uninstallation tool is simply not an option for many ESET customers.

[Marcos 5,070]

7 hours ago, cmit said:

Could you create a solution that can uninstall or upgrade ESET WITHOUT having to RESTART the computer?
If the upgrade failed or a re-installation is necessary, having to restart to safe mode then run the uninstallation tool is simply not an option for many ESET customers.

If upgrade fails, the installer rolls back to the last installed version. A computer restart is necessary to complete upgrade since running new kernel with old drivers for a longer time can cause various issues.

[TheSkymanDC 4]

 

 

An additional computer showed up in the LiveGrid not accessible list late yesterday and was deactivated so that makes 10 computers.

This morning 5 of the computers I deactivated yesterday finally showed as Product is not Activated.

Ran activation task on all 5.  Task failed on 4 of 5.

So we have 4 successful activations from yesterday and 1 from today, 4 failed activations and one remote computer awaiting power-up.

And now - one of the successful activations from yesterday has now rejoined the LiveGrid not accessible list.  Should I plan for the other "successful" computer to rejoin also?

What a mess.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TheSkymanDC 4]

This is getting crazy.

1 computer that wasn't on the LiveGrid is not accessible list has joined it today.  Deactivated in ELA but ERA doesn't show any change yet.

4 computers that were successfully deactivated-activated have now rejoined the LiveGrid is not accessible list.

       2 of those computers have now removed themselves from the list.

4 deactivated computers refuse to activate.  The task fails.

 

This is like the old game of Whack-A-Mole.

[Gamtat 1]

Of the five or so activation issues I initially saw all were solved with a safe mode uninstall then manually running the install task from the RA console.  I decided to just go ahead and push it out company-wide and deal with the consequences.  A dozen further machines failed activation and I was able to fix them in a similar fashion.  No further issues so far and no messing with the ELA license website (futzing with the ELA activation didn't fix anything for me).  I'm lucky in that aside from the hassle it's no big deal for me to do this, I know not everyone has an environment as forgiving or is maybe dealing with remote users.  If it's at all possible I would just bite the bullet and safe mode uninstall because it's the only thing I've seen that has worked.

[cmit 2]

so the simplest solution that would guarantee 100% resolving this troublesome issue is to restart the Windows to Safe Mode with Networking, run the uninstaller to uninstall the ESET product (not the Agent), restart the Windows to normal mode, then install the ESET again. Is that correct?
 

[jdashn 12]

I attached an old version of the uninstaller tool.. i have not tested it with modern versions of eset (6.4+), but we've had a lot of success using it. This old version did not always require safemode to use the uninstall feature, so we use it when we can't get the uninstall task to properly work.  I'm sure there is a reason you can't get this version of the software anymore.. so please use it with caution, i can't promise it won't permanently hose your system or anything like that.

ESET staff please feel free to delete this post if you'd prefer i not attach this version of the uninstaller tool.

ESETUninstaller.zip

[Marcos 5,070]

Please provide me with the following information from a computer where deactivation from ELA and subsequent reactivation (manual or done from ERA) didn't help:

- seat ID (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ESET\ESET Security\CurrentVersion\Info\WebSeatId)
- information if a license file is present in the "C:\ProgramData\ESET\ESET Security\License" folder
- information if the Username and Password values are missing in the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ESET\ESET Security\CurrentVersion\Plugins\01000400\Settings

It is not clear why this doesn't work sometimes since it's considered a solution that should work. Anyways, the good news is that we should have a ultimate solution ready tomorrow; a Configuration module for ERA Agent which will import the username and password from the license key to the registry. After some of you confirm that it resolves the issue for you, we'll release it for all users.

[TheSkymanDC 4]

I was more than a little surprised to find NO computers listed as "LiveGrid not accessible" when I arrived this morning.  That may change as people arrive and power up their computer.

5 computers were list as Product is not activated -  activation task only work on 2 so that leaves 3 still not right.

Hopefully there will be more good surprises today.

 

[TheSkymanDC 4]

OK - one computer just appeared in the LiveGrid not accessible list -

15 hours ago, Marcos said:

Please provide me with the following information from a computer where deactivation from ELA and subsequent reactivation (manual or done from ERA) didn't help:

- seat ID (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ESET\ESET Security\CurrentVersion\Info\WebSeatId)

cdb1be32-c207-49f2-a480-b1122336a25e

- information if a license file is present in the "C:\ProgramData\ESET\ESET Security\License" folder

license.lf is present with a date of  1/10  and a size of 4k.

- information if the Username and Password values are missing in the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ESET\ESET Security\CurrentVersion\Plugins\01000400\Settings

Username and password are present.

 

15 hours ago, Marcos said:

It is not clear why this doesn't work sometimes since it's considered a solution that should work. Anyways, the good news is that we should have a ultimate solution ready tomorrow; a Configuration module for ERA Agent which will import the username and password from the license key to the registry. After some of you confirm that it resolves the issue for you, we'll release it for all users.

 

[winstonsmith84 2]

18 hours ago, cmit said:

so the simplest solution that would guarantee 100% resolving this troublesome issue is to restart the Windows to Safe Mode with Networking, run the uninstaller to uninstall the ESET product (not the Agent), restart the Windows to normal mode, then install the ESET again. Is that correct?
 

Yes. This worked for me every time. About 3/4 of the computers would upgrade with no issues but those that failed required this step to correct it. You will have doubles of the same computer name in your license manager after doing this though it doesn't appear to take up a second license. You can just remove the duplicate. Best option is just to not update any computers at all. Skip this update and wait for the next one. I got about 130 computer up to this version but I won't be upgrading any others.

Edited January 12, 2018 by winstonsmith84

[TheSkymanDC 4]

Here's another from the 7 computers that now say LiveGrid not accessible

 

- seat ID (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ESET\ESET Security\CurrentVersion\Info\WebSeatId)

cef62078-2f05-421d-bb8d-d85d820830de

- information if a license file is present in the "C:\ProgramData\ESET\ESET Security\License" folder

License file is present 4k dated 1/12

- information if the Username and Password values are missing in the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ESET\ESET Security\CurrentVersion\Plugins\01000400\Settings

Username and password values are present.

[ITHoneyBadger 0]

Can a license.lf file be copied to a machine that is missing it?

[TheSkymanDC 4]

Is there ANY chance the LiveGrid not accessible report in the ERA console is false?

On the one computer that I can always remote into and that goes in and out of the LiveGrid problem - all I have to do is open the eset console on the computer - it begins running an update and then the error goes away.

Something seems really odd about that.

 

 

 

[Marcos 5,070]

As for the problems with LiveGrid, they are not related to the issue discussed in this topic in case that the Username and Password values are present in the registry and the license is valid.

It'd be related only if you are also getting the message "The credentials used to access LiveGrid servers are not correct" below the warning "ESET LiveGrid is not accessible". The best would be to discuss these issues in another topic so as not to mix different issues here.

On the client you can test LiveGrid by downloading the CloudCar test file. If it's detected as "Suspicious object", LiveGrid is working at the moment alright. To determine how often a problem accessing LiveGrid servers occur, temporarily set the minimum logging verbosity to Diagnostics in the advanced setup -> Tools -> Log files. You'll subsequently see unsuccessful connection attempts in the ESET Event log. For troubleshooting we'd need a Wireshark log from time when Endpoint is failing to connect to LiveGrid servers.

Regarding the username/password issue, we have a Configuration Engine for the ERA agent ready which will import the username and password from the license file to the registry which will eventually fix the issue for users who are still having this issue and haven't deactivated/reactivated the license nor uninstalled/reinstalled Endpoint on troublesome units yet. Also we expect a fixed version of Endpoint to be released next week (probably on Wednesday).

[MichalJ 434]

Please note that we have also learned that when the upgrade is done without the license selected in the ERA software install task, this issue would not happen. It’s not needed to choose the license, as Endpoint will overtake the license from the older installation. Customers that have upgraded without the license selected have so far not reported the issue.

Please let us know if you have experienced problems with upgrades without license in the install task.

As marcos stated, we have started to roll out the new endpoint build to ESET internal network, so far without any issues (even with license selected), so we expect to commence release process on Monday.

Please note, that we will remove all older 6.6 instances from ERA repository. 

On behalf of the entire ESET, I would like to apologize to all of you, who were affected by this issue. I want to assure you that both product managers, and support representatives have escalated the issue to further optimize code review & QA processes to prevent such issues from happening in the future.