Pacer XMC-E Problems - dongle not found

[formetec]

Hi All,

Need some urgent help, started my pacer up today and i have an error message on the screen once the program loaded "dongle not found".

I have had this error message before when we copied the hard drive as the computer is running windows 98, we had to put the old hard drive back in for it to work.

all wires are connected.

I have contacted Pacer (xyz??) and they want £600 for some one to look at it!

Can anyone shed some light on this for me please, i do not have any back up discs to re-install the software.

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[bokharih]

Hi

I've hit the same problem. Can I check if you managed to resolve the issue and how?

Regards
Harris

Hi All,

Need some urgent help, started my pacer up today and i have an error message on the screen once the program loaded "dongle not found".

I have had this error message before when we copied the hard drive as the computer is running windows 98, we had to put the old hard drive back in for it to work.

all wires are connected.

I have contacted Pacer (xyz??) and they want £600 for some one to look at it!

Can anyone shed some light on this for me please, i do not have any back up discs to re-install the software.

[The-Real-Deal82]

Hello,

I did a search on Google for this particular fault and I saw this thread so thought I would bring this topic back to life with my experience. I joined here a while back but this is my first post as I have mainly used this forum for reading purposes. Our company has a Pacer 25/12HDS machine and it is now in its tenth year of service. Last week our Pacer machine came up with an error on start up. This basically stops the machine from talking to the computer at the control terminal completely. You can not seek datums, do any tool sets or even move the saddle up and down the machine. The message read:

The dongle was not found.
The software will run in demo mode.

This is the first time in 10 years we have experienced this fault. The machine has been pretty problematic in its time with wires wearing out underneath the saddle and spindle issues. I've sent many 'Error Report Support Disk Files' to them over the years and to be fair a chap called Andrew has always been helpful on the phone when you finally get hold of him. We had heard on the grapevine that AXYZ formerly Pacer were now charging for technical support over the phone, but we had never been asked to pay in all these years. Last Thursday we phoned AXYZ to discuss this dongle fault and we were in fact asked to pay £195 for a years Technical support for the first time. With production here on stop it was a lot cheaper than my hourly rate. We paid and then were told this particular problem could be either the dongle had broken, or the software had corrupted. Either way it would be costly.

Now Monday morning we contacted AXYZ again for further help and to discuss costs for fixing it and they informed us they couldn't open out Support Disk. Why they couldn't tell us that on Thursday of last week we do not know. My boss complained to their Operations manager this morning about the poor help we have received and the response was they were waiting for our £195 payment to clear! What a poor response and it did occur to me that perhaps this company are in trouble financially?

This story does have a happy ending though. We've bought a Maxicam M3 CNC machine as a replacement and a guy there tipped us off that they had an ex-Pacer engineer working for them. He works in Nottingham for 'Black and White CNC services'. His name is Shaun Broad and fixed our issue in under 5 minutes. We had to fiddle slightly with our regedit file which he talked us through and it was problem solved. We are back up and running now and AXYZ have since phoned and asked us to send another Support disk. We've let them know what we think of them and their poor response time. I get the impression they would have made the problem sound more complicated than it actually was just to get more money out of us.

Just thought I would share that experience with the rest of the CNC community and hope I haven't broken any rules recommending an alternative company. If others are experiencing this same error message on start up, it could well be a very simple fix. Hope this is helpful

[snwbrdr]

Hi The Real Deal

I dont suppose you can remember what you did with regedit to the registry to get it working again do you? I have the same problem with mine. Failing that do you have Shauns contact details as I cant find them on the internet.

Cheers

[ProGamer]

Hi The Real Deal

I dont suppose you can remember what you did with regedit to the registry to get it working again do you? I have the same problem with mine. Failing that do you have Shauns contact details as I cant find them on the internet.

Cheers

Hi guys, same problem for me and same question. Can anyone help as I have no comunication between the router and my PC. Anything at all to help would be greatly appriciated.

Cheers guys.

Kev

[heraldic]

Hello, do you have a phone number for Black and White CNC please? Cheers Terry

Hello,

I did a search on Google for this particular fault and I saw this thread so thought I would bring this topic back to life with my experience. I joined here a while back but this is my first post as I have mainly used this forum for reading purposes. Our company has a Pacer 25/12HDS machine and it is now in its tenth year of service. Last week our Pacer machine came up with an error on start up. This basically stops the machine from talking to the computer at the control terminal completely. You can not seek datums, do any tool sets or even move the saddle up and down the machine. The message read:



This is the first time in 10 years we have experienced this fault. The machine has been pretty problematic in its time with wires wearing out underneath the saddle and spindle issues. I've sent many 'Error Report Support Disk Files' to them over the years and to be fair a chap called Andrew has always been helpful on the phone when you finally get hold of him. We had heard on the grapevine that AXYZ formerly Pacer were now charging for technical support over the phone, but we had never been asked to pay in all these years. Last Thursday we phoned AXYZ to discuss this dongle fault and we were in fact asked to pay £195 for a years Technical support for the first time. With production here on stop it was a lot cheaper than my hourly rate. We paid and then were told this particular problem could be either the dongle had broken, or the software had corrupted. Either way it would be costly.

Now Monday morning we contacted AXYZ again for further help and to discuss costs for fixing it and they informed us they couldn't open out Support Disk. Why they couldn't tell us that on Thursday of last week we do not know. My boss complained to their Operations manager this morning about the poor help we have received and the response was they were waiting for our £195 payment to clear! What a poor response and it did occur to me that perhaps this company are in trouble financially?

This story does have a happy ending though. We've bought a Maxicam M3 CNC machine as a replacement and a guy there tipped us off that they had an ex-Pacer engineer working for them. He works in Nottingham for 'Black and White CNC services'. His name is Shaun Broad and fixed our issue in under 5 minutes. We had to fiddle slightly with our regedit file which he talked us through and it was problem solved. We are back up and running now and AXYZ have since phoned and asked us to send another Support disk. We've let them know what we think of them and their poor response time. I get the impression they would have made the problem sound more complicated than it actually was just to get more money out of us.

Just thought I would share that experience with the rest of the CNC community and hope I haven't broken any rules recommending an alternative company. If others are experiencing this same error message on start up, it could well be a very simple fix. Hope this is helpful

[Steve Watkins]

Hi
Do you have a phone number for Black and White CNC please

[Paisleypcdoc]

I just signed up to post the solution to this problem for anyone reading this post.

The "dongle not found" error is misleading. It should say licence expired or not yet valid", but that would be too easy.

The problem is simply the DATE AND TIME is incorrectly set on the PC.

There is a button cell battery on the computer motherboard (CR2032 Lithium) that preserves the clock and motherboard settings. The battery has a life of about 5 years. This needs replaced and the date and time correctly set in windows (or in BIOS screen).

Once this is done, the error message goes away and the Pacer Cnc will power up as normal.

Hope this helps someone in the future.

[Chris161190]

Hi
Do you have a phone number for Black and White CNC please

For anyone else struggling with this problem, check the date and time on the computer, if the internal battery has died the clock will be reset. this means the software has detected the machine has effectively gone back in time and comes to the conclusion that the software has been copied illegally... set the clock further forward to the last time it was operational and it should work again. For example if the last time the software was used was with a file dated 01/01/2020 at 00.00 then make sure the new time and date is anywhere past this point. I had this issue with ours and then the clock was set incorrectly to 2022 so i can no longer set the correct date on the standalone CNC PC until we reach that date in 2022!
Set the time and date back to what it should be and it should work.

I have the contact number for Black and White CNC if anyone needs it.

Thanks

Chris.