Running HASP Licenses on Virtual machines

One of the downsides to using OSX for my primary operating system is that most of the major imaging programs are windows-only. To compound the trouble, many of these programs, like NIS Elements, use the “HASP” license manager to communicate with a security key in order to fight piracy. So, you have to have this USB security key installed onto your system, but when attempting to use the key from a virtual machine, like Parallels or Virtualbox, you’ll see a “USB Device Unavailable” error message displayed in the VM window. To avoid this, I use the following command found at this discussion:

1. Remove the USB Dongle
2. Open terminal, enter the following text:  sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.aladdin.aksusbd.plist
3. provide your password to execute this unload command
4. connect the dongle
5. select your VM application, and attempt to connect to the Dongle – on my system, it worked great!
6. Should you need to use Aladdin hasp stuff on your mac, a restart would be required, but I don’t use the alladin drivers for anything other than windows applications.

This solution has allowed me to free my system from the constraints of requiring a bootcamp shutdown / reboot!

-Austin