Troubleshooting your Zemax installation

Under the vast majority of circumstances, Zemax will run without any troubleshooting required at all. In rare circumstances, however, you may find that Zemax issues an error message or requests that you enter a license code when you attempt to run the software.

This article assumes that you have already installed the Sentinel key driver, the RZ Prerequisites package, and the latest Zemax update from the downloads page. If you have not installed these files, please do so before continuing. The Knowledge Base article "How to install Zemax for the first time" can assist you in this process.

Zemax asks for a License Code

License codes are required in order to run Zemax. Each Zemax key has a unique license code for each update of Zemax that is released. Under normal circumstances, each new update of the Zemax installer will automatically include license codes for all Zemax keys that have current support.

If your key is not eligible to run the current version, or you have only recently renewed your support and your license code is not included in the downloaded installer, you will see a dialog box like so:

If you see this dialog box, your copy of Zemax is correctly installed, and the key driver is working properly, but you do not have a license code that allows Zemax to run with the key that is plugged in. Please take a screenshot of this dialog box (use Alt-Print_Screen) and paste it into an email to support@zemax.com. 

Please do not phone for a license code! License codes are complex multi-character strings and cannot be reliably given over the phone. Emailing the screenshot of the dialog box to us is the quickest, most error-free way of getting your license code.

Windows issues an error message

If you attempt to run Zemax and see an error message that appears to be issued from Windows itself (i.e. the word “Zemax” does not appear in the message), then it is possible that the RZ Prerequisites package was not installed prior to installation of Zemax. 

To check if the RZ Prerequisites package was successfully installed, open your registry editor.This can be done by typing the word “regedit” under the search menu in the Windows menu bar:

and then selecting the regedit.exe program:

Then open your registry editor and look under the folder HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NETFramework Setup\NDP\v4\Full:

The “Install” value in this folder should be “1”.

The next location in the registry editor to look at will depend on if you have a 32-bit or 64-bit operating system. For a 32-bit operating system, you will need to look under the folder HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\VC\VCRedist\,while for a 64-bit operating system you will need to look under the folder HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\VC\VCRedist\:

For a 32-bit operating system, you will only see an x86 sub-folder, while for a 64-bit operating system you will see both an x86 and an x64 sub-folder (since 32-bit applications may be run on a 64-bit operating system). In each sub-folder, the “Installed” value should be set to “1”, as shown above.

If you cannot locate the appropriate folder and/or the install values are not set to unity for either the NET Framework Setup (first registry location) or the VC redistributables (second registry location, which depends on whether the operating system is 32- or 64-bit), then you will need to run the RZ Prerequisites package found on the downloads page of the Zemax web site.Then, re-install Zemax from the downloads page.

If, after installation of the RZ Prerequisites package and re-installation of the Zemax program, you still receive an error message, please take a screenshot of the message (using Alt-Print_Screen) and send it to support@zemax.com for further investigation.

Hardware key problem

If you ever see one of the following error messages when you try to run Zemax then there is either an installation error or a hardware problem with either the key or the computer.

Make sure your key is plugged in!

If you are getting the 'No Zemax key was found' error or the 'Key is not working properly' error, there is either a driver installation error or a hardware problem with either the key or the computer.

First note that you will get the ‘No Zemax key was found’ error if you are not using the current Zemax hardware key, i.e. the black Sentinel USB key. If you are using either a Rainbow SuperPro parallel port key or a purple Rainbow SuperPro USB key to run Zemax, then the key must be returned for replacement. See the article entitled “How to Exchange your Zemax Key” for return instructions.

We next assume that the problem is not hardware related, and that the key driver installation is faulty or corrupt in some way. Follow these steps:

1.  Log onto the machine with a user account with Administrator privileges.

2.  Remove your hardware key from the computer, and also remove the hardware keys of any other software that uses hardware key license activation. This is an essential step, otherwise the old driver will not be uninstalled correctly.

3.  Visit the downloads page, and download and run the key driver cleanup utility for your version of Windows. This will remove the existing key driver, and will require a reboot of the machine.

4.  Visit the downloads page, and download and run the Sentinel Protection Installer. It is essential that you use the version on the downloads page, and not any previous version.

5.  When the installer completes, plug in your key, and run Zemax again.

If you continue to get the 'No Zemax key was found' message or the 'Key is not working properly 'message after uninstalling and reinstalling the latest version of the driver, then either there is a hardware fault with the key or with your computer's hardware.

The easy way to identify where the problem lies is to install Zemax and the key driver on a second machine. If the same message occurs on both machines, the key is faulty and should be returned for replacement.

If Zemax finds the key on the second machine but not the first, there is a machine-specific issue. Zemax support cannot help diagnose hardware problems on your computer.

Although Zemax support cannot help you diagnose hardware problems on your computer, here is a list of issues we have encountered before that maybe helpful:

· Power management software may turn the power to USB or parallel ports off. Power management software usually defines a computer as being 'in use' when the keyboard and mouse are being used. During long calculations, power management software sometimes concludes that the computer is not in use, and so shuts down power to the USB and parallel ports, makes the processor run at a slower clock speed, turns off power to the hard drives, etc. All these can cause unexpected problems when running any computationally intensive application. We recommend power management software be either correctly configured or turned off.

· Your computer's BIOS may have USB and/or parallel port operation turned off.

· Over-zealous systems administrators may lock computers down so tightly that they are useless. Zemax must be allowed to access the USB ports, and have read/write and modify privileges for its own folders and any others it is required to read and write data to.