30 day trial

[oggtheclever]

Ok, so I'm at the point where I have nearly finished my media Player project and I've decided to release it as shareware with a 30 day trial.

What I normally do is simply write the installation datestamp to the registry and disguise it as best as possible and then use this to determine how many days the user has got left.

However, this is a pretty primitive way of going about things and was wondering if anyone else had any better ideas?

[nester261]

The trouble with that is no matter how you try and hide this it can be found using a registry monitor.

* This is not a free solution.

I use The Enigma Protector for licensing and store the license in the registry and a file encrypted, if these are deleted in will use a virtual registry with expired license and lock the program.

It has many protection features and also has a virtual machine using it's own "pcode" so that anything in these code markers are encrypted and can only be run after registration.

If you decide to take a look you can use a trial version of it - the developer is very good and will go out of his way to help and explain any questions you ask. It is updated regularly and even offers an online control panel for automated payments, although this is a separate purchase. The help file that comes with it is the best I have seen in a long time.

I have had a program cracked of mine before and it was on bit torrent complete with nfo file! ascii art and everything! I switched to Vladimirs protection and it has never since been cracked!

My only words of warning with this are:

1: With the trial version you will get many false positives... The full version you may get still one or two but he is very active in quelling this.

2: When you implement the protection, do not blindly set values and think you are safe. Read through the help a few times and ask questions on his forums. You must try and wrap the trial completely in the protection so it fits like a glove. There are also custom plugins that can be written and a very good api for custom protection.

That would be my advice,

-nester261

[oggtheclever]

You could argue that the sort of people who use a registry monitor are not the sort of people who would pay anyway.

But thanks for the tip, I'll look into it

[Ouiji]

Not entirely true, I constantly run a registry monitor, it is built into the FS monitor I wrote to watch for any changes made, but that doesn't mean I am looking to bypass someones application protection. And there have been occasions when I am installing new software and I find that is has added an "odd" registry key, or an un-named file, and it can seem suspicious. Having protection such as nester suggested is the best way to keep the crooks honest, and the paranoid satisfied that your application is on the up and up. I am much more likely to purchase software that has reputable protection built in than I am something with a "1 off" reg entry. But again, it is not free, but as they say, you have to spend money to make money =)

Just my 1.5 cents,
- ouiji

[emailx45]

Try this soluction or not (heheh)

http://delphi.about.com/od/productre.../aa022503a.htm

http://www.inner-smile.com/nocrack.phtml

http://www.vclcomponents.com/s/0__/a...acy_solutions/