Issue

While the application was starting normally before, a change on the system caused Alchemy Catalyst to start unlicensed, showing the Evaluation screen:

Double clicking on lmgrd.exe in the installation directory does not start the process (looking at task manager), but start a different process (such as Notepad.exe for example).

 

Reason

Alchemy Catalyst uses a .bat file to start the lmgrd.exe (license manager) and launches the application licensed.

If the file association for the .bat files on the Operating System are changed to use a different editor, for example notepad, then Catalyst launches Notepad.exe when it should be launching lmgrd.exe. Thus the license manager is not started and Catalyst starts in Evaluation mode.

Example: Correct file association in Windows 7:

 

Solution

The .bat file extension association needs to be restored in order for all batch files to run as expected on the Operating system. Note this is likely to affect other software and/or services on the machine.

Under Windows XP

This requires to modify the registry using a .reg file.

This can be found here: https://www.winhelponline.com/articles/57/1/Fixing-the-BAT-file-association.html

 

Under Windows Vista or 7

The tricky bit is that with Vista & 7, Microsoft has changed the way the user can associate applications to file extension and while it's easy to create an association, it's not straight-forward to remove an association (the default for .bat files is to have no application associated with it)

In order to fix your problem, use one of  these applications:

https://www.winhelponline.com/articles/105/1/File-association-fixes-for-Windows-Vista.html

https://www.winhelponline.com/articles/231/1/An-Utility-to-Unassociate-File-Types-in-Windows-7-and-Vista.html

You may need to Right-click the application file after unzipping and select "Run as administrator"

If you get a security warning about the publisher, click Run

Just select the extension  .bat and click the first button  Remove file association (User)

Note: This application is not installed.

 

Notes

While the .bat file extension is broken, it is possible to run the batch files in a DOS prompt.
You can therefore start the start_server.bat file found in the public directory in a command prompt window.

Public directory location:

Vista & Windows 7 = C:\Users\Public\Alchemy Software\Catalyst x

XP = C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Alchemy Software\Catalyst x

 

Products or Versions Affected

  • Alchemy CATALYST 7.0, 8.0 and 9.0