"No valid license found" peculiarity

Cubase
1

I have been using Cubase Pro 12 for several months now without issues .

Yesterday (after using it all day) I relaunched it to make a quick edit in the evening to be presented with a “No valid license found” message, after which Cubase closed. I had not powered my PC off or restarted it since closing Cubase that afternoon.

I ran the Steinberg Activation Manager, which informed me that it could not connect to the Steinberg Licensing Server and advised me to reboot my PC and try again. After I did this, Cubase loaded and ran without problems (without the need for the SAM).

I am confused as to why this happened as according to the Steinberg website:

“Your computer only needs to be connected to the Internet in order to sign in with your Steinberg ID and to obtain the initial activation. Thereafter your computer can remain disconnected from the internet, and your software will continue its normal operation. Running your Steinberg software does not require a constant internet connection.”

Is this not the case?

2

It’s just a bug. As you observed, you can restart the computer to fix.

You can also force quit (kill) the SteinbergLicenseEngine process, this sometimes works, but there’s inter-application communication stuff with the Elicenser driver that can complicate.

3

Thanks Steve. It’s only happened the once, so will hopefully be a rare occurence (be nice to understand what caused it though).