How can i use pre-installed matlab when i don't have a network connection

Hi,

For our research experiments in our university labs, we can connect the PC to install matlab but then we need to disconnect it from the network to run the matlab scripts. This used to work but appears now to be broken (April 2025)

How can I fix this situation please?

Ideally this would be for all users on the PC - worst case we could use a shared local account but this then won't have its own email address.

Ideally the latest version but anything since 2020 would be OK

Thanks

John

[dpb]

See if <How...Without Internet Connection> helps. If not, I'd suggest contact Mathworks directly.

Answer 1

[Steven Lord]

What does "broken" mean in this context?

• Do you receive warning and/or error messages? If so the full and exact text of those messages may be useful in determining what's going on and how to avoid the warning and/or error.
• Does it do something different than what you expected? If so, what did it do and what did you expect it to do?
• Did MATLAB crash? If so please send the crash log file (with a description of what you were running or doing in MATLAB when the crash occured) to Technical Support so we can investigate.

If the problem is not with activation, as @dpb suggested, but with connecting to the license server check with your license administrator (probably someone in your IT department) to see if they can set up license borrowing or a separate license for your needs. If it's not you might want to work with your license administrator and MathWorks support to determine what approach would best suit your needs.

[John Allen]

Hi Steven,

Many thanks for replying. You highlighted that in my rushed question towards the end of the day that I'd not given the level of detail I should have - apologies.

So, 'broken' initially meant, it loaded but no buttons/menu options nor the command window were active, though strangely the edit script frame was active to edits (but not running).

It subsequently transpired that after about 6minutes, the rest of the IDE sprang to life and funtioned properly.

Further investigation indicated that despited having installed a stand-alone licence, the system enviroment variables LM_LICENSE_FILE and MLM_LICENSE_FILE (from my institutions central windows 'build' were taking priority and as I had the PC off-network, Matlab was hung waiting to talk to the license server perfore eventually giving up.

My fix was to delete these two env variables and now matlab loads correctly, and immediately (when offline) using hte local license file.

I used (in a windows CMD session (as administrator)

setx /M LM_LICENSE_FILE  ""  %and
setx /M MLM_LICENSE_FILE ""

to fix things. (nb the /M flag makes the change at local machine level as opposed to just the current local user)

Thansk, John

[Steven Lord]

Thanks for following up and reporting what you discovered and how you resolved it.