Error when running third party software in Microsoft Account but running perfectly fine in Local Account: Windows 10

Question

Hi All,

I'm having an issue where a third party software is giving me a failure to register license error when logged in using Microsoft account but when I switch to the Local Administrator account it works fine. Both accounts are set to Administrator, and this machine is a workstation connecting to a Windows Server 2016 machine using SQL 2017.

There is no Active Directory domain and the application gets the license from a licensing service on the Windows Server.

Previously the application was running fine but on a demo SQL database, when the site went live the demo database license also expired and we dropped the DB in SQL and moved all clients to the live DB, now all users connected to the DB using local accounts are fine, even this particular machine if you switch to local account it works fine, but as soon as you log back in with the account it gives a "License has expired" error as if its connecting to the discontinued and dropped DB somewhere in cache. I have deleted all files in temp and reinstalled the software but the problem persists.

The third party software uses a connection manager that connects directly to the SQL on the Server machine using TCP/IP.

Where could the problem be, what am I missing?

Answer 1

Have you contacted the third party software support team and asked them for help? That would seem to be first choice.

the application gets the license from a licensing service on the Windows Server.
The third party software uses a connection manager that connects directly to the SQL on the Server

Can you clarify the data flow so that we can understand where the authentication error might occur?

Where does this "connection manager" run? Is it a separate process that runs on the users pc along with the 3rd party app? Or is it integrated with the client app? Or does it run on the server?

Using SQL Management Studio, review the accounts that are allowed to access the database. Is each user defined? Or is there a single "application account"? Are you using SQL logins, or Windows users?

https://www.guru99.com/sql-server-create-user.html

Without Active Directory, I would expect that you would have to use SQL logins. And if didn't go through some process where you registered every user, then there would be a single SQL login that every instance of the "connection manager" would use to access the database.

Have you checked the SQL logs for login failures? Does the license service generate a log? Does the connection manager generate a log?