NI Update Service Has Been Disabled by the Administrator

Updated Oct 18, 2022

Reported In

Software

  • NI License Manager
  • NI Update Service

Issue Details

When I run the NI Update Service, the following message is given:

NI Update Service has been disabled by your administrator. 
Contact your administrator for more information about updates to NI products. 


My administrator has not disabled NI Update Service. Why am I seeing this message?

Solution

It is likely that you have an inactive license server configured in NI License Manager (NILM). If NI Update Service can't contact the server, it automatically assumes that your Volume License Manager administrator has disabled Update Service. If you remove the inactive server from NILM, Update Service should work again.

The steps to remove the inactive server from NILM is different in NILM version 4.x and the older version 3.x:

NI License Manager 4.x
  1. Open NI License Manager by going to Start»Programs»National Instruments»NI License Manager.
  2. Click the menu icon close to the top-left corner of NILM's window, then click Manage Volume License Servers:
  1. Remove the name or IP address of the Volume License Server(s) in the dialog window popping up. Confirm by clicking OK.

NI License Manager 3.x
  1. Open NI License Manager by going to Start»Programs»National Instruments»NI License Manager.
  2. The license server will be seen in the license tree above the Local Licenses. Right-click onto the license server and select Remove Volume License Server:

Additional Information

The issue might also be caused by an environment variable on your computer. Find the environment variables named NILM_LICENSE_FILE and LM_LICENSE_FILE, and add _HIDDEN to the name to cause License Manager to skip over these variables. Find more information here: Using Environment Variables to Point to a Volume License Server