The license format is invalid

If you are having problems running ScriptX components and the error is "Access denied" or MeadCo Security Manager shows the error "The license format is invalid" and/or reports the error code 0x800403ee then you have the following options for resolving the problem.

Administrators :: upgrade your clients to ScriptX 7.7 or later and request we issue new license file

ScriptX 7.7 and later use a new method for validating licenses that does not rely on the Windows Root Certificate Store being up to date and does not require an internet connection (this was only required for root certificates updates and revocation checking).

If this is appropriate for your environment, please contact us for a re-issue of your current license (there is no charge for this) and guidance on deployment in your organisation.

Root Certificate Update

Root certificate update is ony appropriate when you are using a license file issued before 1st January 2016 or ScriptX version 7.6 or earlier.

The Quick Guide

Each of the following solutions require administrator rights on your machine and you may need to contact your system administrator.

 

Technical Guide

We use Authenticode signing to ensure that the right code and license files are being used. We have been doing this for many many years -- it provides assurance to users that the code and licenses being used are what they say they are. Note that it is now a common requirement that Operating System and 3rd party components are properly signed.

As part of our committment to a secure environment, it is a requirement that we can validate code and licenses. To do this, you must keep the root Certificate Store up to date.

There are many good reasons for keeping the certificate store up to date, including that doing so will maintain the revocation list by which known bad CAs are revoked. If you do not do this, you risk accepting files/applications that have fake signing information.

If the root CA certificate store is out of date then you will see one or more of the following symptoms:

If you encounter this error the most reliable fix is to update to the latest version of ScriptX.

If you are are unable to update ScriptX, then you may be able to manually update the root certificates stored on the machine. However, please note that root certicates update will only work for PCs that have a connection to the Internet. If the PCs are not connected to the Internet then an Intermediate CA must also be added manually.

Windows Vista or later

If you are using Windows Vista or later the root and Intermediate CAs  should update automatically. If you have disabled this, we strongly recommend you re-enable automatic update.

We recommend a thorough review of "How to get a root certificate update for Windows" by Microsoft. The article discusses updates for Windows Vista and later including circumstances where automatic update has been disabled by Group Policy (there is a link to a technet artical giving a full technical background).

The referenced page also provides links to the Microsoft Update Catalog (all Windows versions) and also links to force re-sync.

Windows XP and disconnected PCs

Both root certificates and an Intermediate certificate CA must be installed.

Root Certificates

There are two approaches to update the root certificate.

Please note: You must be logged-in with an account with Administrator privileges in order to perform these fixes.

The root certificate update application

We recommend a thorough review of "How to get a root certificate update for Windows" by Microsoft. The article discusses updates for Windows XP. We recommend these approaches are tried first.

Alternatively, go to the Microsoft Download Center | March 2011 Update for Root Certificates and follow the instructions to download the update appropriate for your language environment and then run the update.

Manual installation of the root certificate

If the roots update application fails for some reason, it is possible to manually install the root certificate:

This appraoch should be thought of as a LAST RESORT. Please try the official Microsoft root updates first (for example: Update for Root Certificates for Windows XP)

Intermedite Certificate

To install the intermediate certificate:

After installing the root and intermediate certificates the license can now validated. Please note that the validation process can take up to a minute.