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AutoCAD 2008 on Mac OS X / Bootcamp Working

grahambarron

I wanted to post this since it has come up here and elsewhere.

There is a problem running AutoCAD 2008 on Windows XP via bootcamp on Mac OS X. The Macrovision copyright protection in AutoCAD conflicts with the bootmanager of bootcamp, and asks you after each reboot for a license, even if you have already registered properly.

The trick is to install AutoCAD on a regular PC, register it, and then use the Portable License Utility (in the Start menu under Autodesk/AutoCAD 2008) and export that PC's license to your Mac.

For some reason this works.

Graham

 
Jul 19, 08 7:25 pm
rehiggins

I've been running 2008 on my macpro for a year and a half and haven't run into this problem (and recently have bought two imacs for the office with no issues beyond the "normal" XP/ACAD issues).

Do you have a link to any article that discusses this, or was this something you've personally run into and found the workaround??


thanks for posting this, hopefully I won't need it any time soon

Jul 19, 08 10:39 pm  · 
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grahambarron

It's a problem I ran into, and when I googled it found that others had the same problem.

For instance:

http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2007/03/run_autocad_200.html

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1365557&tstart=0

http://discussion.autodesk.com/thread.jspa?threadID=572517

Another fix was to run the license check over the Internet. Perhaps that's what you're doing.

I personally don't like having the Internet running when I'm on the PC side of things (because of viruses or, what is often worse, anti-virus software).

Graham




Jul 19, 08 11:39 pm  · 
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PodZilla

Isn't it interesting how anti-virus software has sort of become a virus in and of itself? I hate using my studio computer now because the school installed McAffee and it asks for updates about every 30 or so minutes. UGH!

Jul 22, 08 4:04 pm  · 
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grahambarron

Yeah at my workplace there is a Symantec weekly scan that I can't stop, it takes a few hours to run, and my computer is unusable while it's running. Serious productivity killer. Somehow it seems to know when my deadlines are. Really drives me crazy.

Graham

Jul 22, 08 7:59 pm  · 
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Try Avast, very unobtrusive, free, and pretty powerful.

Jul 22, 08 8:03 pm  · 
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rehiggins

we use Trend Micro here, very unobtrusive and doesn't seem to take much system overhead; though we're running it through a server with local clients on each machine (updates and scans happen transparently). I don't know what it would be like on a single machine though…works fine on our bootcamped imacs

Jul 23, 08 2:28 pm  · 
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