The Sandman
Uninstall Manager V2.60 - Question 2
Mon Nov 9 20:47:35 1998


Greetings Crackers,

There's no need too summerize on my earlier question, the postings on this forum have covered this and more so we will now proceed onto the next stage of this project, where we can at last blow the dust off Softice and fire it up..

I asked that you didn't use Softice for question one because using Softice on a program you know nothing about would have meant you going into an unknown program blind as a bat.
Diving into an unknown program with Softice, while relying on ZEN to guide you is OK if you already know how to 'crack' AND your one and only goal is to find that conditional jump and nop it out but what would we really get out of the program?. The only times I've ever been dissapointed when doing a crack is when I've gone in and quickly found the crack/patch I was looking for, without taking the time to really see and understand how the protection system worked.

Protectionists learn from us as we learn from them.

As you all now know, 2+2=4 so the author of Uninstall Manager has taken a number of measures to prevent you from easily finding your way around his program. He has made a half-hearted attempt to 'hid' the Nag Screen message strings, as well as the error strings that inform us we have used an invalid Integer for the serial number.. These are the newbies favourite text strings, I know it, you know it and so does this author, so we must now make do with what we have left..

Your next stage to understanding this program is to find any and all weaknesses in the way the program handles both the Nag Screens and it's 30 day evaluation period..

Examples of what I mean are:-

1) I have located a single conditional jump (and there are many to choose from) that when disabled, has the following effects on the program..

1.1 It disables both nag screens from appearing when you start this program up.

2.1 It disables the Time Checking routines, so you can run this program forever.

3.1 When you select the Help menu option, then choose 'About' we now have the 'Register' button disabled (just as it should in a legally registered copy) but in the next screen a new message now appears. This message basically lets you know that the author knew you would attempt this patch and while he can't prevent you from making it he's letting you know that you should support developing of his program by registering it.

2) Is it possible to find where the program stores how many days left you have to review Uninstall Manager. Can we make this program run forever while still keeping the Nag Screens intact?

3)Can we disable the Nag Screens from showing up at run time while still keeping the 30 day evaluation period?.

By all means add anything not mentioned above, that relates directly to this stage of our examination into this program's weaknesses.

Good Luck Everyone..

The Sandman