'Another instance of ReSharper with the same License' error message

This is extremely frustrating for Windows development in which different development branches must be hosted in separate VMs due to entanglements with the OS.  I typically have 2 development VMs open for work on future releases and 1 or 2 additional VMs open for tracking down problems in past releases.  Obviously, I am using no more than one VM at a time -- they are open only to facilitate moving quickly between tasks.  Nevertheless, I have to constantly juggle instances of Resharper among those VMs and it is beyond maddening.

It is also worth noting for anyone considering this software, that it also prevents working correctly even within the terms of the licensing agreement.  Specifically the definition is as cited above is "you are not allowed to run multiple instances of ReSharper with the same license on different PCs simultaneously".

If you develop today and utilize virtual images so that you can both test and leverage the different Visual Studio versions, Resharper will prevent you from doing so even if on the same PC.  Unfortunately the intellectual property mechanism they use to safeguard the product likely uses such signatures as MAC addresses to determine if you are on a physically different PC.

This is quite a disappointment as I think Reshaper is a fine tool but I haven't a similar problem with Visual Assist X.

Any chance of this restriction being refined to detect that the host IP address is also the gateway or some other such networking trickery so we can use a host/guest licence.

I, possible like others, use a VM for older Visual Studio development, and often have the current VS edition running in the host, either for reference to pick up some code I might have done there, or just as part of juggling multiple projects.

Cheers, Aaron.

This is so annoying, really! Please fix this, there must be way to detect that reSharper runs under VM. :)

Agree with the comments above. I get that you want to insure that the licenses being used are being used by the same person so that there's no "cheating" going on, I like to make money on my software also, so find some way to allow for this to happen. I almost always have a second or third VM (or even a physical machine I'm remoting into) running with Visual Studio and Reshaper. I had to reinstall Resharper on one machine because it wouldn't switch back on even after I "Disabled" the license on the other machine. 

How about a two-factor authentication system to insure it's the same user? As annoying as that would be, it would at least allow me to use Resharper.

This restriction is so 1990's

Come on Jetbrains, sort it out.

Anyone that reaalllyyy wanted to play dirty would simply get a cracked version off a well known swedish torrent sharing site.

You're just penalising those who have paid for it!

Agree that this is annoying, and especially in 2014 when software piracy is run rampant. This message does not stop piracy, it just encourages legitimate users to pirate in the future.

I too run Visual Studio with Resharper both directly on Windows8.1 and also from within a hyper-v virtual-machine on the same PC where I need a slightly different environment.  I now have to shut-down all instances of Visual Studio in one environment, then start new instances in the other environment, just to do what used to be ALT-TAB.

So Resharper is no longer much of a productivity tool.  Opening & closing Visual Studio takes ages.

Surely Jetbrains must be able to come up with some way of managing the licencing that will work for the large number of developers who work in a similar way?

I can't agree more. I develop on multiple VMs as well as my main box and this license restriction is an undue burden on your paying customers. 

I agree with the torrent comment, this only punishes those who actually paid.. if someone wants it free.. it is out there. What makes this even more frustrating is when you disable R# it doesn't restore the original key bindings rendering Visual Studio nearly useless. It would not be as bad if I could at least still navigate and use VS but once you disable R# welcome to notepad.

I also agree that this is an absolutely ridiculous restriction. Punishing the legitimate owners isn't a good business practice (and as others have said it is incredibly easy for the illegitimate to download and use to their heart's content on multiple machines without problem).

Considering not to renew my resharper license because of this limit.

It's the same to me. I have also to work in a VM with a special configuration and have a PC for the normal work. It's no solution to work on one VS with ReSharper and on the other one without. I hope the solution is not to work without ReShaper on both machines. The next renewal will decide ...

In ReSharper 10 we have turned off this detection for Personal License Keys.
Commercial License Keys are still detected if run simultaneously.

Better than it was before, I guess, but still doesn't really solve the problem, when running at a company you are probably more likely to be doing serious work using more VMs, etc. It's hard to get the company to buy multiple expensive license keys for a single developer. This is so clearly a product management decision that was made in a lame attempt to satisfy people, while still being greedy and ultimately angering legitimate users. Anti-piracy measures are so 1990, and this is so boring to even be talking about. Terrible management decision to put this in the first place, and ongoing bad management leaving it in.

I just struggled with this today using Webstorm (OSX, native) and Resharper (Windows VM) simultaneously with an All-Products Company License.

I've contacted support and the answer was basically that a VM counts as another machine. This is beyond frustrating.. the company I work for bought this pack to satisfy our needs for the variety of IDEs we need for work and now this is a complete showstopper to being productive. You can't really expect a all products pack user to just do one-sided development.. I need to do full-stack with debugging on both sides simultaneously.. so how shall I go forward about this now? If the answer is to buy another license then I can say: Not gonna happen!

Are you really going to put the penalty on the paying user?

Is there anything going to be done about using the same license on a virtual machine? I'm using CLion on a Linux VM and Reshaper and Webstorm on a native Windows system. Each time I dare to focus my window on Visual Studio or Webstorm I have to reactivate my license in CLion (doesn't happen in VS or WS though).

This doesn't stop piracy, you're only annoying paying users. Please fix this.

Is this seriously still an issue?  I'm trying to run linux in a vm and it is giving me nightmares.  I have a windows front end and a linux back end, I NEED to test both at the same time.  I'm on the same computer, why is this an issue?  Considering how much my company paid for these licences, I'm seriously frustrated...

I am not even in a VM scenario, but I regularly juggle using my laptop for travel, desktop at work and a desktop at home. I perform work on all these, and having to disable and re-enable ReSharper all the time as I switch between these is super annoying. I am not actively working on all three computers at the same time, but I don't want to close down Visual Studio either.

I repeat the mantra above:

This doesn't stop piracy, you're only annoying paying users. Please fix this.

I will look for illegal options if this doesn't stop, not because I don't want to pay, but because I want to use the product. All day, every day. It is not acceptable to purchase multiple licenses, the price is high enough as it is.

One of my co-workers found out, that if the operating system usernames are the same, it won't detect it as a license conflict. So I changed my Linux VM username to the same name as my Windows user and this fixed it for me. No more annoying pop-ups :)

This is a real pain, I often develop on a laptop and my main PC.  I'm sitting here switching between the two at the moment (setting stuff up) and getting this stupid message each time about disabling other instance etc.

I've updated to Resharper ultimate today from an old version where I didn't have this problem - seriously thinking if I should stick with this product.

This needs to be sorted out, childish in the extreme. 

I have to agree with the general sentiment here.

I use a MacBook Pro for development and have a full JetBrains Toolkit commercial license. I develop in Visual Studio + ReSharper inside a Windows 10 Parallels VM for a lot of my server-side development but I also do React web development for frontend on the host OSX and I get the same issue whenever I dare to switch between both environments. What annoys me most about this is that it is two completely independent products that cause the issue, despite sharing a license, for instance I am not trying to use two copies of WebStorm at the same time.

One could argue that I could just install WebStorm on the VM but I prefer the majority of JetBrains IDEs on the OSX side than the Windows side (seems more natural) but more fundamentally, given the cost of the license I should just be able to do this without any issue. 

I can see more of an argument across multiple PCs for this behavior but not between a VM and physical host. I have a lot of respect for JetBrains and the products have saved me a lot of time and keystrokes but this is my one sticking point with the toolbox, I can't 'Develop with pleasure' as freely as I would like.

You know, I think the system is fair. One licence, one pc (at a time). I use virtual PCs so I want to be able to transfer my licence between them as I switch to them.  Is it really as simple as Resharper automatically popping up a modal window and me clicking "disable other instance" or me going to the resharper licence menu item and clicking "Disable other instance"? Hardly a chore considering the massive productivity gains resharper offers.

Is there a restriction on how frequently I can swap the licence between virtual machines? ie if I swapped between two or three windows installations many times each day, will that flag any problems?

Add me to the list that is finding this incredibly frustrating.  I run just two machines, my dev desktop and a dev laptop.  When I have issues somewhere else in our building I often take my laptop if need to troubleshoot in an environment somewhere in our building.  So yes, I'm running VS in two locations at the same time and therefore it is really annoying to have this popping up all the time.  Please fix this ASAP.

Please add me too! This is nonsense! I'm a single developer using a single Physical PC (Mac) with multiple VM in it in order to use Python and test it multiple environments. Why should the experience be so frustrating??? Please fix this ASAP. I fully understand your fight against piracy but here you are fighting against your users/customers much more.

This is super annoying... I work either on my laptop or PC, but if I leave a solution open on my laptop while I work on my PC then it thinks I'm using both at the same time. If you want to track this then you should perhaps also see if there is any activity in visual studio or if the other device is actually actively using any features at the time.

Come on guys , you don't know how to distinguish PC's from VM's on same PC.

That's sad.

This is why I switched to CodeRush. DevExpress is light years ahead of JetBrains...

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=DevExpress.CodeRushforRoslyn

Dear JetBrains,

My employer is assigning to employees randomly generated string as a user name. You cannot expect me to use that same name on virtual machine that I manage myself.

Please, provide an alternative to identify that it is me. This is extremely annoying for legitimate users!

Pirating users are usually willing to use crappy user names so that they get the software for free. I am not.

With regards,

Martin