Where do they hide it at

[John K]

Hey Guys,

Probably nobody knows or has the tech knowledge to answer, but asking anyway just in case. Isolated issue thrown to the wind.

Scenario is that you download a 15 day trial of something. You never get to it and the trial is expired. You uninstall and reinstall and the trial is still expired.

Was once important to me, but gave up the curiosity until wanting to run Sonivox SoundStage.  Old tech program but some great GM sounds I would like to still use, and had moral and legal activation left.  In the compassionate ***** spirit of Waves, Voyetra, others, we are screwed when the company tells you that they changed their minds and will no longer activate your purchase. Funny they never tell you this when they beg for your dollar up front.

Sonivox gave me the middle finger and would not tell me how to reactivate the synth, but told me they would allow me to uninstall and reinstall every 5 days if I really needed the product.

So I do that, and the thing still comes up expired. Sonivox followup says to suck it up, but they feel my pain and I can always open the credit card for current products that still work as of today.  But what about tomorrow when they change their minds and hold you for ransom for a working update like Waves did. Shades of what is happening with Native Instruments cancelling access to activation for a lot of their older products. The old BII is about their best organ product and still want to use it, but NI says I'm screwed when I move to a new computer.

Even using current logging installers to uninstall without a trace, I'm toasted. How do they get around sneaking in some time stamp beyond any installation reversing portal available.

Curious, but like Jefferson Airplane said, "doesn't mean s**t to a tree" in the bigger picture. So many worthy replacements even for free if shafted by some greedy company.

John

[Sheens]

just bought 2 power adapters 16v 1000mA and without having a meter I"m guessing they put out maybe a 100mA.

so they're useless (to power my old Presonus eq's) but the seller/company and the host website both declined my claim, money gone.

I bring my car for service/yearly mandatory certificate to dealership, very quiet there and feeling already it's gonna be an expensive visit.

sure, balljoints replaced 20.000 ago by the shop itself again are bad, and some other suspicious 'defects'.

but have to say that fortunately the majority of companies are great, fair and have excellent service.

feeling / sharing your Sonivox pain...

 

[craigb]

And these same companies wonder why cracking is such a big problem... ?

[John K]

Agreed, and have no clue as to where the balance is. Fully accept community wide condemnation for this, but I get every crack I can for any program I have paid full dollar for that holds me in their power to shut off activation at their leisure. Usually evaluate a purchase requiring ilok or whatever if I can crack it in a meltdown. If I got a solid crack, keygen, whatever, will open the credit card to give what is required to support the developer. Thank god for some 14 year old kid somewhere leveling the playing field.

All my software is morally paid for, no pirated stuff on any of my rigs. I got to face Allah in the next world, and piracy is not an option. If I can't afford it, do without and seek an alternative, but got a bloody warez backup for about three fourths of what I bled the yankee dollar to pay for. Just in case, as I have witnessed too many times and been the victim of. The little guy is always the loser either through a blatant middle finger or through some fine print legal jargon that tells you are screwed without recourse.

What I still can't figure out is where the ticking time stamps are hidden. Reference again Iobit Uninstaller as well as other failures. Claim as usual is that the MS uninstaller leaves debris all over the place. Iobit however logs every change on the hard drive to insure that every trace of the installation is removed. Sill the demo expires on target. Just wondering where they hide the clock and why nothing is capable of doing a complete uninstall.

John

 

[henkejs]

18 hours ago, John K said:

Just wondering where they hide the clock and why nothing is capable of doing a complete uninstall.

John

 

I used to think an obscure flag was hidden in the registry somewhere and didn't get cleared on uninstall. Another option would be for the software to phone home over your network connection and check their records to see if your computer has installed before. Probably lots of other options I haven't thought of.

[antler]

Maybe in the registry, maybe in a temp/config file somewhere.

Here's a thought though: if your install-tracker tracks absolutely every change made to your computer and undoing them still doesn't work, maybe it's not the installer that sets the flag. It might be the program itself that does it on first run, basing the start-date on when it was installed.

[John K]

Thanks guys,

Thought this as well. The ilok non dongle thing likely has to sync to a connection with the online license that contains the time stamp. Makes that beyond our control. Mystery for me still remains as to how offline demos can shoot something past a logger program that claims to record and reverse any and every change to the hard disc.

Hope all are well and dealing with the virus lockdowns. Be safe. You are all so important, loved by so many.

John

[Bristol_Jonesey]

23 hours ago, henkejs said:

I used to think an obscure flag was hidden in the registry somewhere and didn't get cleared on uninstall. Another option would be for the software to phone home over your network connection and check their records to see if your computer has installed before. Probably lots of other options I haven't thought of.

This is them most plausible method by far.

Be interesting to start the re-install with your internet switched off, see how far it gets.

[craigb]

Might be done with a cookie too.  Install software, it adds a cookie with an trial over date in it.  When you try again, it finds the cookie already exists with an expired date in it and kills the install.

[craigb]

Ooo...  Another approach I've seen is one where the expiration date is held in a class library (a .dll).  These are the ones you see cracked a lot.

[paulo]

I was told by somebody at a well known music software vendor that when you give your email address to obtain the demo, the d/l is linked to your email address. The way round getting a new demo period is to set up a new email and get a new d/l through that email an it will work. No idea if this is true in every case, just passing on what I was told from somebody who had nothing to gain by telling me that.

[craigb]

Another way I've seen is to save the MAC ID along with the embedded license of the software.  This would need to be kept in a database on the vendor's server (requiring you to have an internet connection to activate).  By keeping the MAC ID (which uniquely identifies your device), then the 'ol new email address trick won't work.

[mettelus]

On 3/27/2020 at 9:34 PM, John K said:

Mystery for me still remains as to how offline demos can shoot something past a logger program that claims to record and reverse any and every change to the hard disc.

This is actually not accurate. There are portions of the registry specifically untouched by registry tools so that 1) people cannot simply bypass software trials via registry cleaning (ethical reason) and 2) they often get paid not to do so by major software vendors (monetary reason). If the machine is offline, I highly suspect it is indeed registry entries that are not being cleaned, and you will be hard-pressed to find a cleaner that will remove those entries.

 

[antler]

9 hours ago, mettelus said:

There are portions of the registry specifically untouched by registry tools

I've not heard about this before. Just out of interest, where did you learn about this?

[John K]

Mettelus,

Also curious as to where you info is coming from. Makes sense except that given the vast number of timed demos and the number of uninstallers, industry would be hard pressed to keep up with each other to protect everything coming off the press.  Agree with you that the offline stuff has to be hidden in the registry somewhere.

Remote past for me, wanted to understand how uninstallers missed the time stamp because was a zombie working stiff and never got to the demo before it timed out.. Really wanted to see if I should to buy the thing, but crap, has it already been 15 days...  Trajectory ahead, credit card only.

Direct process given to me by Sonivox was to do a complete uninstall of SoundStage. This would wipe out everything and I could start a new 5 day trial upon installation if I absolutely needed to use the lush strings GM preset in a project.

No go.  Demo expired and no way to activate since Sonivox refuses any transfer or further activation of what I bled the yankee green for.  Forked again.

John