rslinx pro - weird serial? legal copy?

I came across a process recently that is using rslinx pro for a RsView32 runtime PC. The strange thing is that the rslinx serial number is comprised all of zeros, and the orignal software provided by the OEM did not include rslinx (except the free lite version on the rsview32 disk). Is it possible I'm unwittingly using an illegal copy of rslinx? The 'all zeros' serial leads me to believe that this was some type of special licensing, but It seems odd to me that there is no info pertaining to this license provided. We had all the software licenses transferred to our company when we purchased this automated system.

The OEM has long since gone out of business. Something seems shady here. Anyone heard of this before?

You've always been able to enter all zeros in the serial number on the Classic version of RSLinx (OEM/Pro/Gateway/etc). It isn't that shady since the protection is in the activation disk. Unfortunately, not having that serial or the disk makes things very difficult to track. There are ways of bypassing/transfering activation with the disk, which can be very shady, but that has little to do with the serial number.

Most likely an illegitimate copy of the activation.
When installing any of RSI s/w you only need to enter 10 digits - zeroes are easy but could be anything (except GML where you need to get the first 4 digits correct). Very similar to the old AB s/w (6200, ControlView) which needed any combo like AA0AA0AA.

Of course, you'll never get support quoting those bogus numbers.

Don't confuse the serial number reported in the Help -> About menu with the actual activation serial number.

The Help -> About menu only shows the serial number that was entered by hand when the software was installed. This can be any ten-digit number; all of mine say "1234567890". This entry is entirely up to the user.

If you run the Activation Move or Activation Reset utilities, the actual serial numbers of the activations will be shown by that utility.

One thing that might also be going on is that there was a version of RSLinx called "RSLinx for RSView", which was an OPC-capable license whose only OPC client could be RSView32. That version was activated by the RSView32 license, I think, and sold as a bundle.

Ken Roach said:

If you run the Activation Move or Activation Reset utilities, the actual serial numbers of the activations will be shown by that utility.

Click to expand...

Good to know... I should have thought about that. Thanks for the tips. At least I have someplace to start looking now.