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.

I've had that happen a couple of times with different programs. Depending on what the program is, sometimes in the "Help" menu the license is shown. If it's not you can search for a crack but those don't work very often. You can always clone the old machine and put it on your new machine. Just make sure you have enough hard drive space on the new computer to accommodation the old computers hard drive. I wouldn't advise this option unless you know what you're doing though.

There are a number of pay products that find product keys. Google 'product key finder windows 10' or just 'product key finder'.

How did you activate it to begin with? You no longer have that code? Depending on the programmer, how old the software is, etc., it's very possible the license is encrypted. So even if you can find it, it may not be a simple copy and paste. Is there nothing else on the market that does something similar?

Campfire Time wrote:How did you activate it to begin with? You no longer have that code? Depending on the programmer, how old the software is, etc., it's very possible the license is encrypted. So even if you can find it, it may not be a simple copy and paste. Is there nothing else on the market that does something similar?It was activated with a remote server using my license number, so that's why I'm guessing something in the registry.It can be replaced with a different piece of software, but I've put a lot of time into this program's database and it serves my needs perfectly.

Back in the early days of PCs, I was a member of a Commodore User Group. Any problems like this were handed to a 14 year old who stuck the disk in the computer and read it at the machine code level. He's spot where registration required and patch the code around it so that the install wouldn't stop to ask for those details. Problem solved. All you need is a 14 year old nerd that knows how to code.

Program requiring activation on a new computer | Good Sam Community

philh
Explorer II
Sep 16, 2019
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
Explorer II
Sep 11, 2019
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
Navigator II
Sep 11, 2019
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
Explorer
Sep 09, 2019
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
Explorer II
Sep 09, 2019
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
Explorer II
Sep 09, 2019
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
Explorer II
Sep 09, 2019
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
Explorer II
Sep 06, 2019
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
Explorer II
Sep 06, 2019
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
Explorer II
Sep 06, 2019
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.

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