copy protection

[Bill Brehm]

I think I posted this in the wrong place before, so I'll try again here.

I want to write software copy protection code. I don't need it to be very
highly secure, but I do want it to prevent casual copying and do some things
to make hacking not so easy. So a few questions.

1. I want to make the registration code be different on each PC. I think
processors now have a unique ID and the MAC address of the network card
could be used. How do I get access to these IDs programmatically? Are there
other things I could use?

2. When you download a demo version of some s/w and it times out, you
usually cannot uninstall and reinstall, because even after uninstalling,
something is left on the computer. I guess it's in the registry, right?
Where do they put it that it can't be searched for or deleted? I've seen
some registry keys that are just a bunch of numbers. COuld it be related to
those and how are those numbers generated to prevent conflicts with other
applications.

3. Are there any APIs for MSVC++ 6.0 that already provide this complete or
partial functionality?

 

[John Phillips]

Well, for 1 and 3, check out CoCreateGUID().

Don't have any useful suggestions for #2, but I think you're on the right
track.


John

 

[Bill Brehm]

John,

I think this helps get me started on #2, but I don't think it helps with #1.
If I used a GUID as a computer ID to generate a unlock code, it would be too
easy to copy the GUID and unlock code over to another PC, unless I also hid
these inside a GUID named key and hoped that the user couldn't find it. I
wouldn't have to hid the unlock code if the computer ID were tied to the
hardware and not a random number. Thanks for the push in the right direction
though...

Bill