System Error: 11004 Winsock: Valid name but no record (NO_ADDRESS)

Every time I hit a Flexlm issue it seems to be a different fix!

Thought I’d share this particular one with you as it took me a while to figure out 🙂

Had a client approach me with a laptop running Wildfire Pro/E 4 and Pro/E 5.   If you’re not familiar with Pro/E, it is a CAD package which just happens to use FlexLM as it’s license server.    FlexLM is very common as a license server so you’ll probably find this problem with other products.

Now I don’t know why, but version 4 worked, but version 5 didn’t?   Both using the same license settings.

Looking at the license status (in this case using a tool called ptcstatus.exe) gave the following error:

Warning (-96): License server machine is down or not responding.

FlexLM Licensing error:-96,7

System Error: 11004 “Winsock: Valid name, but no record (NO_ADDRESS)”

Now in this case, the license server was of the form “licence-server.companydomain.com”.    The odd thing was that at the start of the license status command was the following:

“License Server is UP: <license-server>”

So it must be talking to the server right?    I confirmed this with a ping to license-server.companydomain.com.

The key to fixining it was when I noticed another comment “Hostname: license-server”.

Not it’s not a fully qualified domain name – and if you try and ping the hostname it’s unresolved.

So the solution – add a line to the hosts file commonly found here:

c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Simply add a line with the ip address and hostname and you’ll be up and running!