Program requiring activation on a new computer

[philh]

Company is gone, and didn't do the right thing and post a universal activation code before he quit the business.

I'm getting a new computer and would love to find a way to crack the program to get it to run on the new computer. I thought about doing a before and after save of the registry to see what might have changed looking for a flag that I could compare to my old computer... but not sure how successful that may be.

Any other ideas? People have tried to contact the programmer without success.

[philh]

As projected, the program did not transfer and be operational. I have a couple of other issues to straighten out, but still thinking about the VM.

[philh]

opnspaces wrote:
if your new computer hard drive is large enough you could create a vm of the old computer. VMware player is free and you can use their VMconverter program on your old computer to create the VM on your new computer.

Now that's an interesting suggestion. It has a 1T drive, old computer has a 225 drive. I intended the new computer to also replace my desktop... but If I move some **** to the server.

[opnspaces]

if your new computer hard drive is large enough you could create a vm of the old computer. VMware player is free and you can use their VMconverter program on your old computer to create the VM on your new computer.

[mich800]

philh wrote:
Name of the program is Living Cookbook.

I didn't get the feeling the programmer was particularly sophisticated. Didn't think to look for a hidden directory.

I've ordered us our new computers. Also ordered laplink to transfer programs to the new computer. They are not expecting this program will transfer properly, but the program looks to help me get the new puters up and running.

Looks like you may be SOL. There are threads on reddit with the same problem. I didn't see any good resolutions in my preliminary searches.

[philh]

wnjj wrote:
I couldn't find much online but others with your problem. There was a user who stepped up and wrote a program that can grab your database and allow you to view it and/or use it in other programs.

https://forums.egullet.org/topic/153080-living-cookbook-software/?do=findComment&comment=2206745

Thank you

Luckily, It is still operational on two computers. Every time I do an update, I backup the file and create a word document. I haven't liked any of the other programs. For some reason, this program had a lot more features, but never gained the popularity of other programs. I think it was bad of the developer to just abandoned the program and leave the users hanging. I've had other programs where they had published a universal access

[wnjj]

I couldn't find much online but others with your problem. There was a user who stepped up and wrote a program that can grab your database and allow you to view it and/or use it in other programs.

https://forums.egullet.org/topic/153080-living-cookbook-software/?do=findComment&comment=2206745

[philh]

Name of the program is Living Cookbook.

I didn't get the feeling the programmer was particularly sophisticated. Didn't think to look for a hidden directory.

I've ordered us our new computers. Also ordered laplink to transfer programs to the new computer. They are not expecting this program will transfer properly, but the program looks to help me get the new puters up and running.

[wnjj]

2012Coleman wrote:

wnjj wrote:
Moving the drive likely won’t help as the key is probably locked to a specific computer. Similar to the way Windows keys used a combination of the hard drive serial number, motherboard and network card. You could change out one of those but more than that required a reauthorization. That’s why remote servers are used.

If we knew the name we may be of more help.

Maybe - maybe not. Authentication is performed once - not every time the program is launched.

Possibly, but the way it works is a specific key is generated using your purchased license plus the hardware numbers. The software very likely checks the hardware each time it starts. That doesn't require any remote server.

[2012Coleman]

wnjj wrote:
Moving the drive likely won’t help as the key is probably locked to a specific computer. Similar to the way Windows keys used a combination of the hard drive serial number, motherboard and network card. You could change out one of those but more than that required a reauthorization. That’s why remote servers are used.

If we knew the name we may be of more help.

Maybe - maybe not. Authentication is performed once - not every time the program is launched.

[wnjj]

Moving the drive likely won’t help as the key is probably locked to a specific computer. Similar to the way Windows keys used a combination of the hard drive serial number, motherboard and network card. You could change out one of those but more than that required a reauthorization. That’s why remote servers are used.

If we knew the name we may be of more help.

[2012Coleman]

Maybe try removing the old computer hard drive and either install it in the new computer case or get one of those cases and use it as an external hard drive connected via USB. The drive won't be called C anymore, but you can still run programs that reside on it - just find the program and create a desktop shortcut. If you don't know where it is, right click the current shortcut and select properties.

[TheBearAK]

Is it a database program? Can we get the name of it? Some use a file in your user directory (hidden) to store the encrypted license.

Some of these mid-90's programs could be fooled into checking locally for verification.

Did you try google: " key verification hack"

[AsheGuy]

philh wrote:
I have the license key, but their remote server did some sort of verification and activation of the key.

I'd say your chances of finding a way around that are not good, unfortunately. Do you have a 13-year old hacker type neighbor? 🙂

The suggestion of an alternative program might have to be your path.

As someone suggested, porting your existing disk image to your new computer might work, but it would involve quite a bit of work:

• Save an image of your new computer's hard drive
  
• Create an image of your old computer's hard drive and put it on your new computer
  
• Do any operating system and hardware driver updates that might be needed, Windows seems to be getting better at doing the latter.
  
• If this does not work, put your new computer's disk image back on it.
  

[philh]

I have the license key, but their remote server did some sort of verification and activation of the key.