How do installation discs keep track of install counts?

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4138255

  •  30-09-2019
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Question

Many install discs only let you install the software X number of times.

However discs are stateless. They are unchanged (AFAIK) after installation. So This puzzles me.

How do they keep track?

Was it helpful?

Solution

They get in touch with the company servers in the background to validate the install (not all apps but most network connected apps).

OTHER TIPS

In many ways. If you're on Microsoft windows, most likely the installation program writes the number of used installations in a key of the windows registry.

You can use ProcMon to monitor the keys accessed by a process during execution, it's a free tool from Microsoft.

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