Freeware, Trialware and Shareware...

[lvramanan]

Anybody have any idea of Making Trialware and Shareware Programs like Macromedia Products that expires after some days of usage or which expires after certian number of usage, etc., anybody have any idea please help me. Thanks in advance.

[Vlatko]

Shareware programs can be easily cracked. That is why i think thet a demo with limited functionality is better.

[floppes]

My shareware program (WinSpeedUp www.winspeedup.com) is reduced in functionality and this works very good. But this can be cracked, too.

So there are quite a few cracks for my app, but nothing is uncrackable!

The most popular way to crack is to decompile a program to assembler and analyse how the deactivation of your functions work. So don't name your functions like LockFunctions() or UnlockFunctions(), call them any other (PCSpeed... . ).

If you want to use a X day shareware, be careful with saving the value. You have to save it in a secure way (encoded). Most programs save the expiration date in the registry. With programs like RegMon (www.sysinternals.com) you can see which values a program reads and writes in the registry and can easily crack it.

I use unlock codes to unlock the deactivated functions, but this caused the crackers to make key generators! Now I am thinking about programming a function to check the unlock code over the internet, but not everybody as internet access

Tip: read cracker tutorials to find out how crackers work, this is the best way to protect you against crackers. But if your program is good, they will find a way to crack it...

Good luck!

[Matthew Gates]

www.activelock.com - control that makes your program shareware.