Railmaster registration of key

[Gimo49]

Hi

I have not been able to register the software with the key provided.

 I have ticked all the boxes Hornby support have asked of me to do since May; they have checked the key; I have sent them the screen prints with the error messages and a log that seems to show problems at the server end not recognising the key. Hornby have asked me to download the latest evaluation version, 3 times, the last two appear to be the same version,and I'm still unable to register. I have tried 3 different pc's same result. I use adim rights!

Stupidly I have invested some heavy cash in equipment that i have been unable to test and I'm now 6 months into warrenty. I was advised that the installation must be completed before connecting the elite box. I wonder if this is true because the first message that appears after installation is that the program cannot handshake with the unit. On the other hand the question was not relevant under the original evaluation period.

Any suggestions

Steve

 

[Fishmanoz]

Hi Stephen, welcome to the forums.  In 99% of cases, failure to register is due to your AV program blocking RM communication with the RM servers, no matter what you believe you have done to avoid this.  Failure to handshake is usually a teething problem with your initial setup.

 

I suggest you go to the 2nd top locked thread in this forum and work your way through all of it.  Let us know if this solves your problems or, if not, what problems remain.

[Yelrow]

Stephen, hi, do you mean Elink box, as Elite is the main hornby controller. If you have that, you can happily play at once, whereas, as fishy says, Elink, is a bit more difficult.  Whilst everybody will tell you to contact  HRMS, there is a different route that i use. Hornbys customer services manager, Mark Lodge, is well qualified to talk you through this, over the phone, and he should be advised anyway, of the problems you are having. His phone number is.  01843 233 525.  Only speak to mark. If he is busy, leave your number, and he will call you back. He always does, very dedicated guy. He may also, be happy to  discuss your warranty.  By all means, follow the locked threads, but when i set mine up, mark did it with me, over the phone, and it worked first time. john

[96RAF]

The problem with the eval version is once it has expired you cannot uninstall it and start again, except on another machine, as it obviously leaves a covert tag on your pc somewhere saying youve had your playtime now its time to pay up, which it appears the OP has done but for some reason his pucka code will not activate.

 

Maybe the eval timeout has a hidden agenda preventing the code from working. Why this should be defies logic but it may be the root of the problem.

 

If per John's suggestion Mark cannot sort it out over the phone then ask HRMS to fix it by remote access.

[Yelrow]

RAF, hi, totally agree, but  thought enough time had been lost, and that mark may  be quicker. Remote access has changed. Before they used to advise so you could be there. On my last occasion. it was all done in my absence. Not a problem, but it means you cant have an imput. john 

[Fishmanoz]

After you have been through the Setting Up and Getting Started thread and if you still have problems, just to clarify that there are 2 very different support organizations to talk to.  The first that people come across is HCC, Hornby Customer Care whose manager is Mark Lodge and phone number as John says or the Contact Us number at the bottom of the forum, they are the same.  Apart from Mark, they know very little about RM.

 

The second organisation is HRMS, Hornby Railmaster Support.  They are in fact not Hornby, they are the contractor developing RM, and they know it inside out.  They can only be contacted by email in 2 different ways.  The best way is via the internal RM email facility on the Help screen In RM.  However, if you can't register the software, the chances are this route won't work. Easy to tell, immediately upon emailing, you should get an auto acknowledgement back to your specified email address. If not, it hasn't gone.  However, all is not lost as you can email them directly at support@rail-master.com, don't forget that dash.  In intractable cases, HRMS will ask to log onto your machine remotley and will fix it themselves.  Yes, they will fix it.

 

Not surprisingly, no matter which of the 3 ways above that you use, the fault-finding process will be exactly the same.  In the thread, you go through it yourself, with Mark or HRMS, they will lead you through it, or do it themselves remotely.  Your choice.  The exception is if your evaluation copy has expired.  Then only HRMS will be able to help by remote log in.

[Yelrow]

Fishy,   i particularly made the point only talk to Mark. Secondly, when i bought my set and had problems, i knew nothing about HRMS, and Mark installed everything with me, by phone. Thirdly, , since they changed their contact tool , HRMS, give no indication about contacting you, timewise,   so the previous 2 way discussion, no longer occurs. Certainly, they fix it, but its less user friendly, as you dont know what steps they took or why. I found this particularly helpful, in the early days, but conceed its more time consuming. john

[Fishmanoz]

John, I agreed with your only talking to Mark.  But this is only going to work if it's the simple issue of doing all of the standard configuration things, some of which people miss (that's why the Setting Up and Getting Started thread is there, it has all of them).  If there is something out of the ordinary with your RM, your Windows configuration or a stubborn AV, it will take HRMS logging in remotely to find and fix it.  And if you do have them log in, you can sit and watch exactly what they do so you know should it happens again.  You know yourself you had to have them log in to fix one of your problems.

 

We know there is a very wide range of abilities in the people who purchase RM, different levels of computer skills, different ways of learning and doing.  Many have no problems at all and we never hear from them.  And some just say it doesn't work, help, while others take us through what they've done and so give us a lot of clues.  Stephen gave us 2 clear clues, first that his AV is a problem because it wouldn't register, and second it's not set up correctly as it won't handshake.  The chances are then that this is a simple one of going through the steps and it will be right, but we won't know until he tries.  The locked thread or Mark will do it equally well for him if it is simple, just different ways of achieving the same thing.

 

My last post was just to make it clear what the choices are, not that one is right and the other wrong, just that they are different ways to the same end.

 

But we digress, have you managed to sort it yet Stephen?

[Gimo49]

I must thank everybody for their excellent comments. I’m sorry not to have replied before now but illness ending in a heart stop rather put the stoppers on everything except trying to survive got the last 5 years!

However I now am just getting over about of COVID and have decided my legacy is not going to be having purchases in their boxes. I’ll be going through your comments again and see if I can’t shake life into that Elite system.

thank you

Steve

[96RAF]

Good to have you back Steve after your unwelcome forced layoff.

A lot of water has gone under the RM bridge since 2016 so the first thing you need to do is download the very latest version from the link in the main RM forum page sticky.

You should also have a good read of the FAQs before you get stuck in, but as Fishy said 5 years ago, getting it to work is usually down to sidestepping the AV and firewall and getting your .ini file set up properly.

Have a go at that first and see how far you can get. If you hit trouble just come back and ask more questions.

[RDS]

Hi Steve

Sorry to hear about your reason for absence, hope everything is alright now.

One thing you did mention in your original post was that you had tried 3 PC's.

RailMaster is very strict on one PC per licence and once the registration has been entered into a PC, that is the only one it will work on.

If you have loaded, or tried to load, the Registration key into more than one PC, you will need to choose which PC you really want to stick with and contact RailMaster support (support@rail-master.com) and explain the problem. After you have it loaded correctly on a PC you can swop to another PC yourself but it MUST be De-Registered from the original PC first.

Could you please confirm that you do mean Hornby Elite controller and not elink.

[Yelrow]

Dave, think it was Elink, but no doubt, poster will confirm.

Mod Note: Yes John, I have a feeling it could be. Dave