>>Hi Does Anyone Know How To Record How Many Times A Program Is Run Like i
 >>Records it To The Exe Or To A File For Like Registering Perposes.
 DR> Well, I'm just a beginner in all of this, but it seems to me
 DR> that if you made a file of TYPE RECORD... and put a single
 DR> byte of data into it, representing a variable for number of
 DR> times-run.... and this data was saved as a binary file...
that is one way of doing... however, there's nothing stopping them from 
simply deleting that file and restarting thei eval period again...
there are several things you could do...
1. distribute the counter file preinited with the original program and refuse 
to run if it has been modified or deleted. using this method, the counter 
file will be larger than one byte because you'd need some sort of checksum, 
maybe version indicator and possibly a little bit of other stuff to aid in 
ensuring that your program is the only one that has done the updates to the 
data file.
2. you can also store this information in a field inside the program and have 
the program modify it's exe file directly. here again, you'd likely want to 
have some sort of checking routines to try to prevent someone from hex 
editing the file and altering the counter.
these two are probably the most common. neither, however, can completely 
prevent a determined someone from breaking the 'security' around the counter.
if one really wants to limit a program until it is registered, they should 
also seriously consider having two versions of the prorgam. the one they 
release with the counter and another one that is only set to registered 
users. the one with the counter would NOT have all the feature routines in it 
so hacking it would not give the hacker any more program.
these are, by far, not the only methods. i'm sure there are others that are 
more involved and inovative...
)\/(ark
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