Dongle Licenses (for Microsoft Windows Machines)

Under Windows, licenses are available that are locked to a dongle rather than to the host ID or Ethernet address of the computer. A license file is still required; it will contain the four-digit dongle number in place of the computer's host ID or Ethernet address. The dongle is used only to provide a unique four-digit dongle number to which the license file is locked. The license is only valid when run on the machine to which the dongle is currently attached. All license details, including the Xpress features authorized, whether the license is static or floating, the release of Xpress authorized, and so forth, are contained in the license file.

Displaying the Dongle Number

The dongle number can be obtained by running the Xpress Host ID tool (see Obtaining a Full License File for more information). Note that the dongle must be connected to your computer and the dongle device driver must be installed and running (as described below).

Installing the HASP Dongle Device Driver

When installing Xpress for Windows, the setup program automatically tries to install the appropriate device driver. For the driver to install correctly, you must have Administrative privileges and restart the computer once installation is complete.

To enable the dongle drivers for Windows to be installed manually, use the software located in the tools\dongle directory. To install the driver, navigate to the tools\dongle\sentinelhasp folder and run the haspdinst.exe program with a -i flag. For example:

haspdinst -i

Notes for Xpress Release 13 (and Earlier) Users with Dongles

Releases of Xpress prior to Xpress-MP 2003 used a different mechanism: the license information was included in the dongle itself, and different types of dongle were supplied depending on whether the license was static or floating. When using your existing dongle with Xpress-MP 2003 or later, all information on the dongle, apart from the four-digit dongle number, is ignored. Since your dongle does not need to be updated to work with 2003 or later, it still supports previous releases of Xpress.

If you have a NetHASP dongle (red plastic casing), for use with a floating license, the NetHASP license manager is no longer used, and can be disabled. Floating licenses are now administered by the xpserver license manager as described in this document. The NetHASP dongle acts as an ordinary dongle and must be attached to the license server.