FAQ & Troubleshooting
Answers to common questions, and fixes for known issues.
Contents
Common Questions
Does MintEncoder work with OneDrive
No. Don’t point the live database at OneDrive. Use the app’s own encrypted backup, and let the backup files live in OneDrive otherwise the live .db file will cause endless problems:
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MintEncoder's database uses a technique that writes changes to a couple of small temporary "helper" files alongside the main database file, merging them back periodically. This is standard and safe on a local drive, but not designed with cloud sync in mind.
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OneDrive syncs files as soon as they're saved or closed, and can briefly lock or lock files mid-write. Combined with those helper files, this is a known cause of "database is locked" errors — and in worse cases, a corrupted database if OneDrive syncs at the wrong moment.
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The database is also encrypted, with a separate small key file stored alongside it. Both files always need to stay perfectly in sync with each other — which is one more thing that could go wrong if OneDrive is syncing the live database.
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OneDrive's "Files On-Demand" feature can also mark files as cloud-only until they're opened, meaning MintEncoder could hit a delay or failure while it waits for the database to download.
In short: don’t let OneDrive sync the live, in-use database. Instead, use MintEncoder’s own backup feature (or the scheduled Auto Backup) and point that backup file at your OneDrive folder — a finished backup is a plain, closed file, which OneDrive can sync safely.
Can a product be deleted
No. Product Manager deliberately doesn’t offer a delete option – Retire Product is the only lifecycle action, and it just marks the product inactive rather than removing it. Every licence and every signing key ever issued references its product; deleting one outright would orphan that history, breaking your ability to look a licence up, verify what a support ticket is even about, or trust the Audit Log’s account of what happened. Retiring achieves the same practical outcome – the product drops out of everyday use and stops appearing as available for new licences – without destroying the record.
Once a product has been retired, it can no longer be recovered. The Prefix and Productcode are also not reusable.
Can MintEncoder have multiple users
MintEncoder doesn’t have its own login system, and that’s deliberate rather than a gap – every entry in the Audit Log is tagged with whichever Windows account was signed in at the time. So the way to get several people using it with individually attributable actions is simply to have each of them run MintEncoder under their own Windows account – separate machines, separate logins on a shared VM, or a terminal server session per person all work. There’s nothing to configure inside MintEncoder itself for this; the accountability comes from how you deploy it, not a setting you switch on.
If you also want to stop any of those people from casually changing the settings that determine whether the business can keep issuing licences at all – Backup, Auto Backup, Recovery, System, and Key Manager’s signing-key actions – that’s what the Administrator Lock (Settings) is for. It layers one shared password on top of individual Windows-account accountability, protecting exactly the actions that matter most while leaving day-to-day work like minting licences untouched.
Troubleshooting
Activation succeeds but the activation screen reappears
Symptoms: The licence appears to install successfully. The application restarts. The activation screen appears again.
Cause: The licence failed verification during startup — often an incorrect product prefix used when the licence was generated. If the application expects MKL1 but the licence was generated using MEL1, it will be rejected.
Resolution: Open Product Manager, verify the product prefix matches what the application expects, generate a new licence with the correct prefix, and activate again.
Licence shows as expired immediately after generation
Symptoms: A newly generated licence is marked expired the first time it’s activated.
Cause: An incorrect expiry date, or a clock difference between the issuing and activating machines.
Resolution: Re-check the expiry date before generating, use No Expiry for perpetual licences, and confirm the customer’s system clock is correct.
Licences signed with an older key stop verifying
Symptoms: Licences generated before a key rotation fail to verify after an update.
Cause: The application only trusts the current public key rather than the full historical key set.
Resolution: Export the full historical key list from Key Manager and ensure your verification logic accepts any key in that list.
Domain-locked licence rejected on the correct domain
Symptoms: A licence locked to a customer domain is rejected on that domain.
Cause: Domain values are matched exactly, including subdomain — example.com will not match www.example.com.
Resolution: Confirm the exact domain with the customer, or enable Any Domain if locking isn’t required.
PDF certificate fails to generate
Symptoms: Clicking generate produces no file, or an empty PDF.
Cause: A missing write permission on the output folder, or an interrupted licence record.
Resolution: Choose an output folder you have write access to, then regenerate from Licence Log.
Locked out of the engine-room settings (Administrator Lock)
Symptoms: Backup, Auto Backup, Recovery, System, and Key Manager’s signing-key actions are all disabled, and nobody currently at the business knows the administrator password.
Cause: The administrator who set the password has left, or it was simply forgotten. This is expected behaviour, not a fault – it’s exactly what the lock is there to enforce.
Resolution: On the unlock prompt, click “Forgot password?”, request a recovery code, and paste the code emailed to the confirmed Recovery Email address back into MintEncoder to set a new password. If that address is no longer reachable, contact MintEncoder support – the lock can be cleared from the vendor side so a new administrator can set a fresh password.
Does the email template exist outside of the db or compiled code where it can be edited externally?
no, nothing external.
The subject and body live entirely in the database, per product:
editable only through the Email Settings → Template tab inside the compiled app. There’s no .txt/.html/.json file anywhere on disk you could open in a text editor and change.
The “MintEncoder original wording” that Reset to Default restores is a hardcoded C# string literal baked directly into the compiled code.
Are the email credentials protected within the encrypted db?
Username: stored as plain text in the encrypted DB
Password: encrypted separately before it ever reaches the DB, via Windows DPAPI
The whole database file itself is also encrypted at rest (SQLCipher), so the password blob sits inside an already-encrypted file — genuine defense in depth, not just one layer.
The SQLCipher key itself is a random 256-bit value, generated once, and is also DPAPI-protected before it touches disk, in a sibling .dbkey file next to the .db file.
Credentials and the database are both encrypted at rest and actions are individually attributed to whoever performed them with full audit trail accountability.
MintEncoder shows "Restricted Mode" or keeps prompting about updates
Symptoms: Minting a licence, generating a signing key, or adding a product is blocked with a message about your licence, even though you’re confident your MintEncoder subscription is active. Or: a dialog keeps appearing suggesting you check for updates.
Cause: MintEncoder checks in with mintencoder.com once on every launch – partly to let you know about new releases, partly to confirm your own MintEncoder licence is still in good standing. If that check hasn’t succeeded even once in 30 days (almost always a connectivity issue – a restrictive firewall, no internet that day, or mintencoder.com itself being briefly unreachable), MintEncoder restricts the same three actions an expired licence restricts, until a check succeeds again. The update reminder is separate and never blocks anything by itself – it’s just a nudge.
Resolution: Confirm the machine running MintEncoder can reach the internet (mintencoder.com specifically, if you’re on a restrictive network), then reopen MintEncoder. The very next successful check clears the restriction immediately and automatically – there’s no manual reactivation step, and nothing you created while restricted is ever lost. Existing data – Licence Log, Key Manager, Products, Audit – stays fully visible throughout regardless.
Button text is messed up with RDP conenction
The Remote Desktop uses the lcoal environment settings to build the RDP session when the RDP session Display setting is set to FULL SCREEN.
This usually means that the display that has the button issue is set to 125% (or more) Display Scale.
Example
Laptop has a display of 1920 x 1080 … on many laptops, the desktop font for icons etc is very small, so windows may default the scale to 125%. (WIndows Settings > System > Display : Scale & layout)
If the RDP Display settings are set to FULL SCREEN, it will inherit the 125% scale for fonts, which will cause the button text to grow and look out of place.
Solution
Either change the screen scale to 100% or change the RDP Display Settings to not use FULL screen.
Recovery Key Export Failed
This is not an error with MintEncoder.
This is more than likely trouble accessessing the location specified for the Recovery Key Folder.