Quick ideas for activation
-
I have a finished implementation for activation that relies on the manufacturer assigned non-changable serial number of a hard drive. During testing I discovered that my method of discovering this number does not work on all versions of Windows that are going to be supported. The WMI claass Win32_PhysicalMedia does not exist in Win2k. The workaround for this is also very painful, requiring DeviceIoControl and probably administrative priveleges at runtime. I noticed that there is Wmi32_BaseBoard class that provides a serial number. However, not all motherboard provide this information (driver code never sets the number). What is a good, simply way to identify a machine that works consistently on Windows 2000 and newer? Alex Korchemniy
-
I have a finished implementation for activation that relies on the manufacturer assigned non-changable serial number of a hard drive. During testing I discovered that my method of discovering this number does not work on all versions of Windows that are going to be supported. The WMI claass Win32_PhysicalMedia does not exist in Win2k. The workaround for this is also very painful, requiring DeviceIoControl and probably administrative priveleges at runtime. I noticed that there is Wmi32_BaseBoard class that provides a serial number. However, not all motherboard provide this information (driver code never sets the number). What is a good, simply way to identify a machine that works consistently on Windows 2000 and newer? Alex Korchemniy
Serial numbers are notorisouly unreliable. You might want to look into the machine SID. Search MSDN for it. I think it's the first 96 bits of the local admin account's SID. RageInTheMachine9532 "...a pungent, ghastly, stinky piece of cheese!" -- The Roaming Gnome