can you change a HDD Serial?

[Tjalfe]

Hi.

I have a buddy who uses some old software at work, which is tied to a licence, which is locked to his hard drive serial no. his drive is on the fritz, so he has copied everything onto a new hdd, unfortunately the software now does not work anymore.. is there an easy way to change a hard disk serial number, so he can match his old serial no?

[Gurm]

Nope. So sorry.

Then again, the likelihood that it's REALLY tied to the SERIAL number is remote. It's probably tied to the VOLUME number, which is certainly changeable, although I forget exactly how.

Getting the SERIAL number involves some low-level calls.

[Tjalfe]

from the licence file
HOSTID=DISK_SERIAL_NUM=bca0268f

unfortunately it sounds like the serial no, not the volume

[Wombat]

There are a number of programs that use that kind of license "protection."

This is one of the times that I recommend finding a crack for the software.

[Tjalfe]

if they had to lock it, they should have done so to a dongle or something else portable ( and no, I don't condone those either) .. so no way of changing this serial then.. that sucks..
astalavista.box.sk here I come.. I hope I avoid catching anything from there

[UtwigMU]

Astalavista is OK. With IE you need to set security to high. For Firefox there's mycroft search pluggin for astalavista.

[Jon P. Inghram]

Be sure to run a virus check on anything you download, those places are prime breeding grounds for trojans and viruses. (Or so I've heard... )

[dbdg]

I lost a utility that way years ago, serves me right for paying for it.

[ObieWan]

It looks like a Volume ID, aka Volume Serial Number, easily changed with, for example, VOLUMEID.EXE from www.sysinternals.com. (Assuming Windoze, of course.)

[Wombat]

Doesn't changing that piss Windows off, though?

[ObieWan]

Well, I don't recall my Win2K complaining, and 98 was certainly oblivious, though I can't say anything about XP. Perhaps the license file could be changed to match the drive? Seems too easy, of course...

[Tjalfe]

I told him to try VOLUMEID.EXE, and it worked like a charm..
what stupid protection scheme to use in the first place

THanks ObieWan !

[Guru]

use astalavista.com in stead of astalavista.box.sk !

[Gurm]

use astalavista.com in stead of astalavista.box.sk !

Urk! Well, I guess. Not that I've ever found anything on any of the OTHER sites indexed by astalavista.com except for astaforum.com which is no longer any good.

[Drizzt]

I told him to try VOLUMEID.EXE, and it worked like a charm..
what stupid protection scheme to use in the first place

THanks ObieWan !

We use the same in our product, only coupled with a bit more ID taken here and there.
Moreover, we crypt it with 4 keys generated from various sources, so it's hard to take over :-D


However, why your friend has not simply called the Software House to re-register the software?