My BFD karma must be really bad. Had another remote session scheduled today, pulled up the project that we had been working on earlier this week and… no BFD.
BFD3 has been disabled because: No license file was found. Please run the BFD License Manager"*
How the hell does this happen? My understanding is that it will update authorization automatically whenever BFD3 is launched and that authorization is good for 90 days. Did I miss something, or is this just the worst implementation of copy protection ever?
Yes. 100% agreed.
I wanna know too. Because, if this may happen to anyone using this software, sometimes at very bad timing, then we NEED to find strategies, and this will happen when this is talked about and shared, and this forum is the best place for such.
Are there some recommendations already to avoid this behaviour? I will gratefully read those here, as the OP and any of us who own and use BFD would. This is our instrument, a virtual multi-drum, just like a real one. More so, this is not a kids’ toy or some decoration that lies around the house. We use this to make or play actual music.
If this deauthorizations have patterns, we may avert them. Like leaving the PC on for certain hours before the event. Or more user friendly strategies, For instance, why not have user generated authorizations that preclude the event completely for say, a week? This way, we may travel, prepare our sets or plays on advance with 100% security in this regard…
Or why not the 90 actual days? Is there a security reason why this assurance shouldn’t be achieved?
May we have a serious and thorough conversation on this? Or this is not either advisable? What are the real reasons behind this recurring behavior?
Thank you for your collaboration and support
@Fender_Bender - nope, no changes to any hardware, quite diligent about checking everything twice before heading out for a location session. running win10 pro with updates disabled but wouldn’t put it past MS to sneak something in a security update, but that shouldn’t affect any “authorization”.
haven’t checked here much lately, wondering if i missed a change to something, or if there was an issue with InMusic servers and some sort of “reset” that managed to kill current authorization status.
That SoundMILL points to an existing example of a potentially intrusive process, Windows updates, that had been changed in response to user complaints about constant badly timed forced updates (Bill Gates himself suffered from it at a televised yearly presentation of a new version).
As a result, Microsoft now allows users to deter Windows updates for a week, precisely to solve a serious untimely problem, very similar to what BFD 3 has been causing to many of its users.
InMusic could at least provide such partial solution to the recurring unpredictable loss of previously existing registrations at important occasions. Providing a solution like that, will rise BDF’s tarnished user’s confidence and its overall perceived reliability at professional instances.
At the end, what is the actual effectiveness of all those developer hours, months and years of continuous debugging, improving usage workflows and features… when BDF comes to a halt at the worst moment, just because that thorny side feature: its registration system, decided to act all by itself (or by one of the many coordinated stages that form it)??
I ask this once and a second time if necessary. It simply makes no sense. It is a disservice to all the efforts from all these years and to the dedicated people that had collaborated.
@Nspace to be clear, my comment on the Win10 update was purely speculative. I keep my production PCs dedicated and disconnected except for transferring project files or downloading SW updates. WinO/S updates are turned off and only enabled when we have time for maintenance/debugging.
I still have no idea why the authorization failed after having run BFD in several projects just days earlier. Despite my claim that I keep them offline, I was checking out some new plugins for this project and able to confirm that it was online when these projects were run. So… my understanding is that it should have reset to 90 days.
The only times I’ve had BFD3 deauthorize on me has been in the middle of critical sessions. It’s like the thing waits till the day of deadline hour to decide it wants to f me.
The last time this happened a couple weeks ago was during serious crunchtime and my materials were delivered hours late because I had to download and re-sequence/mix other drum samples, and explaining that was extremely embarrassing.
At this point given how a couple of the most important features/settings in BFD no longer even work, and the authorization being so terrible, I am sticking to the FXpansion version till apple stops supporting Rosetta2. Not sure even the launch of BFD4 can win me back with this unprofessional/unreliable DRM.
I feel great sadness over the fall of such a solid studio workhorse for decades now.
You probably should have phrased that as a question.
As for the auth problem, at this point I don’t think InMusic gives a shit about BFD users anymore. As long as they can keep pumping out $49 sales to new customers, they’re recouping what they spent to buy the rights to the software. And to protect those rights, they mess us up.
If there’s a different interpretation of what I’ve experienced, then I’m all ears.
It’s been a couple weeks since I opened BFD3, or the LM and I just got deauthorized opening the LM. Took about a minute to get it back up again and all green. I’m certain I had plenty of days left on the counter. At this point, I think they’re just doing it to screw with us. Jk.
@Fender_Bender I assume you’re running the latest release of BFD3? checking further, i’m on the release before the latest atm, wondering if that might be an ‘excuse’ for the latest completely unexpected de-authorization. can’t recall exactly why i decided not to update at the time, but must have been something i read somewhere. or perhaps i thought i finally had a somewhat reliable install?
…
expect my circumstances are far from typical, in that we’ve shifted to a lot of remote location work over the last few years (i.e. pandemic, film industry). and unfortunately have now been derailed for a 3rd time (fwiw all paying gigs). we’re budgeting an upgrade for all of our PCs, and while I’ll probably find a way to keep a rack mount running the fxpansion installations, it’s just not feasible for the rest of our network.
bottom line, we need something we can rely on. thought (hoped?) we had been doing pretty well, even considered picking up expansions (multiple copies btw), but this latest is only confirming our worst fears. so despite being a long time advocate/evangelist for BFD, can no longer put off investing in a replacement. it really is a shame. jme of course…
I’m also on the previous build version. It more or less works, so I haven’t had a need to update. The latest is probably more for Apple Silicon anyways. It’s the same LM for both builds and this arbitrarily deauthorizing, stems from a bug with the LM, not BFD3 (afaik), so I don’t think updating would make a difference.
A couple months ago when I was on the road, I tried installing the latest build on my laptop and it was crashing for me, so I think that’s the main reason I’ve held off updating my main rig.
The same thing happened to me recently. De-authed with about a month left on the clock. I had no internet access to re-auth so all BFD projects were halted.
I’ve had a few unexpected deauths. Never anywhere near the “90 day” refresh. Always up and running in a few minutes, but just fortunate that worked out. Glad I don’t need to do this for a living.
