of just how productive you can be using Revelation's tool set.

Last week I spent a day on client's site as he had some issues of stability that he wished to resolve. We spent the morning going through these then, as afternoon approached, he asked "OK can you knock me up a copy protected installation routine for me to ship my product with?".

Here's where a Revelation/Open Source Community mashup really comes into its own.

Firstly download NSIS - we have the engine to create a full SETUP.EXE.

Next take the excellent NSIS installation script provided at one of the conferences by our friends at SRP and spend 5 minutes customising it - we have the working OI Installation routine.

Next install Sprezzatura's registry method handling routines registry_methods.zip - we have the wherewithal to copy protect the application by embedding encrypted registry keys.

Finally write a new front end screen for the application that compares the Windows computer name (using the GetComputerName declaration in DLL_KERNEL32) to an encrypted version thereof in the registry and if found launches the app, if not launches a newly written registration screen. Have the registration screen display an encrypted string to read to the client's tech support line to receive back an unlock code which permits the stamping of the registry. We have the solution.

Now we're not claiming this is bullet proof (bullet proof we can do but it'd take longer) but it's one heck of a lot of return for 4 hours of invested time!

Labels: mashup, nsis, registry