Program to execute on one machine only

Program to execute on one machine only

• ReneeC

  Hmm, now this is interesting. I don't want to clutter this forum up with usless posts with this one being premature but it will take me a bit of time to check this out and I wanted to let you know I got your reply.

  The very idea of 'hidden files' is a little bit distasteful but the idea of someone spreading my program around without my permission is also distasteful. I've got to think this one over a bit.

  Thanks nobugz, once again. Looks like I'm gonna have to put you on the payroll! (grin)

  Bill Langston

  
  
  

• eroe

  That's going to be hard to do. CD-Roms are generally copy-protected by playing weird games with the disk formatting. Downloadable games are usually protected by it generating a unique key at installation time which is sent to a website, along with the credit card number, and unlocked with a number that unlocks that key. The Q&D approach is security through obscurity: put a hidden file on your flash drive. Here's a shareware tool that promises it can do it better (haven't tried it)...
  
  
  
  

• Hipolito Lopez

  *Scratches head* Hmmm.... seems like this should be possible some how. I know I've heard of it being done.... I would think that there should be a way to cycle through the list of available drives on the system, find the one you are running from, and determine the drive type (C - Hard Drive; D - CD-ROM; E-USB Mass Storage; etc.)

  -ca

  
  

• Modeller

  Thank you S_DS for your reply. It is very good info for future reference but not what I was looking for. That is my mistake, I should have said 'drive' instead of 'machine'.

  Specificly, I want to lock my program to a thumbdrive not a machine. I don't have a particular brand of drive chosen yet I'm still searching for the best bulk deal on them so I have to be rather 'generic' in that regard.

  Thanks again for the tip, if I can't do what I want to then I will probably go with that solution but I would rather not do it that way.

  Take care,

  Bill Langston

  
  
  

• windypoint

  Keep it simple and run the app off the flash drive, no guessing which one of potentially many drives has the app or whatever "lock" you'd come up with. Use GetModuleFileName(0,...) to retrieve the drive letter.
  
  
  
  

• Tatworth

  Perhapse.... but only one of them is going to be the one that the app is running from. Application.StartUpExecutable .... I think will give the path where the app is funning from (in .NET) .... in VB6- it's app.Path.

  -ca

  
  

• dmc7198

  Hi,

  Apparently every BIOS chip has a unique serial number or other such number.

  If you can find a way to read this in then you could lock a program to one machine.

  Try some of the links after clicking this one>>

  http://www.google.co.uk/search hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=reading+bios+serial+number&meta=

  Regards,

  S_DS

  
  
  

• enric vives

  Yes, I agree -ca, I just don't have the knowledge to figure it out. I feel that if we can find a solution and have it archived here for others to see that it could be a valuable 'tool' or 'method' for programmers to have available to them. I only wish I had thought more carefully when I named this thread so people searching would find it more easily. (that is assuming we find a solution, ha, ha)

  Yours truly,

  Bill Langston

  
  
  

• markovuksanovic

  Thanks nobugz. I typed up a long reply and when I went to post it an error occured. Grrrr

  I'll download the shareware and see what goes. Hope this goes thru!

  Bill Langston

  
  
  

• LarryETL

  making the usb drive read-only would only keep people from writing to the drive, it would not keep them from copying the program contained there to somewhere else. i think you might want a software lock, aka dongle, that would require the lock to be in a USB port before your program can run. there are many companies that offer these, just do a web search.
  

• pkr2000

  Yes, my thought was to check if the program was running from a removable device and deny if it was running from a fixed device. Like I said; just a simple thing that would stop a person from sending the program to another and them pop it onto their c: or d: drive and run it. They could copy the program to a flash drive and it would run but if I don't tell them the reason for the error then they won't know that unless they experiment. If someone is determined then there is not much I can do about that short of going crazy trying to protect this thing.

  For me simple will work but for developers with much more invested a more 'robust' way to do this could be great stuff. I hope we can pursue it further.

  Yours truly,

  Bill langston

  
  
  

• Gulden

  Umm, no. Modern PCs have more than one USB port. They could plug in more than one flash drive....
  
  
  
  

• kastanienreis

  I think I'm getting closer. It looks like I can use the DriveInfo.GetDrives method to determine if the drive is a removable one and work with that. I am using 2.0 of the framework so this is a new method to that version.

  Because I am not looking to do anything too drastic, I only want to keep honest folks honest so I think this might work for me.

  Now if I can figure out how to construct things I'll be home free!

  Bill Langston

  P.S. "Keep it simple...", that's the ticket.

  
  
  

• David Törnquist

  Taking a slightly different angle, but you could investigate on the actual drive you will be using. My USB stick has a small switch which changes it from write to read only. So you could either get those and just break the switch off (!) or see if it's somehow possible to make the thing permanently read only. I don't know enough about the sticks, but they must have a small "system" area that could be hacked
  
  
• Program to execute on one machine only