Registration via internet of newly installed software (on each machine)

[mlapworth]

I sell a piece of software called TaskMagic. Installation currently does not require registration of any kind and it is possible to use a silent msi install to install it to all machines on a network (although not all schools are 100% happy with the msi in its current form). I am thinking of moving to a register online system (following requests from distributors outside the UK). The system involves the registration on each machine (once only) following installation and with an internet connection. Updating, re-installing the software etc should not require re-registering of the software.

So I was wondering:

1) How many educational software titles require registration on each machine in the way outlined above?

2) How much would a system like this discourage a network manager from installing software which requires registration in this way? Is it the kind of thing which would encourage them to turn to the member of staff or department and say that, sorry, s/he is not able / prepared to install the software?

 

I thought I'd ask on here, as you're the people who have to do the installation, and maybe you could give me some feedback on how you would like installations to be ideally. (If there is a thread that deals with this already, I haven't found it, but I'd appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction.)

 

Martin Lapworth

[Jamman960]

Not much of our software currently requires activation over the net, as long as its as automated as possible I don't normally mind(if we could add the details to the msi that'd be great).

 

It must support automatic proxy detection and authentication - I've found a few programs that don't, having to resort to email/phone or other manual forms of activation isn't fun if it needs doing for a decent amount of workstations

 

Make sure the activation carries accross between users - I've encountered one program that required activation per user and pc, this is the only software I've so far refused to install - fourtunatly the company has since fixed this issue.

 

Oh and if your going to ask for things like address, phone number that need to be entered per workstation please keep it short... software that asks for loads of info other than the serial/email address tends to get false info returned.

[powdarrmonkey]

1) How many educational software titles require registration on each machine in the way outlined above?

 

Few, in my experience. Most software houses currently grant a site license and trust the institution, because it's in their own interest since:

 

2) How much would a system like this discourage a network manager from installing software which requires registration in this way? Is it the kind of thing which would encourage them to turn to the member of staff or department and say that, sorry, s/he is not able / prepared to install the software?

 

It would be an important factor, certainly. Please imagine that you are one of a team of two looking after 500 desktops and 300 laptops, some of which are staff machines so you only see them rarely. This is not an uncommon situation in UK schools.

 

A teacher asks you in November to install this software, which you know there isn't time to do until the following Summer, so you tell him this and he is disappointed, but accepts the situation because he realises how overworked you are already. The Summer arrives and you distribute the software unattended, and spend three weeks going around every machine to register it (which takes longer than you anticipated, because the LEA's filter is paranoid and stops you, and you have no local control over it - also common). After doing so, the teacher explains that because it took so long to get it set up, he's already found a web-based alternative and forgot to tell you, because he's a busy guy too. You are later taken to hospital after jumping off three bridges.

 

I thought I'd ask on here, as you're the people who have to do the installation, and maybe you could give me some feedback on how you would like installations to be ideally. (If there is a thread that deals with this already, I haven't found it, but I'd appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction.)

 

Personally, an ideal solution would be one of:

 

a) an MSI transform holding our license number that we apply to unattended installations, and your installer checks it against your server automatically (but remember the problem with filtering);

b) a totally web-based application, with our static IP address registered against it. This is also easier for you to maintain; however, be careful of LEAs that proxy every school in the county through one IP.

 

Kudos for coming and asking though. It beats most edu-houses, who write a mediocre application, wrap it in a poor installer, and sell it to teachers without any consideration for how it's going to get on their machine.

[AngryTechnician]

Good to see someone actually doing market research in the sector! As powdarrmonkey has mentioned, many educational software developers don't realise they need to talk to the technicians and not just the teachers. In answer to your questions:

1. Quite few, as far as I know.
    
   
2. Unless there was a simple way of automating the online registration, this would unfortunately be a deal-breaker for me. I'm a team of one, and I can't afford to spend my time visiting 140 machines in turn to activate a piece of software.
   

The only piece of software I've dealt with that required online activation was Matchware Mediator, and that allowed you to pass information to the MSI installer that would trigger the per-machine activation automatically when it installed. I hasten to add that this process didn't always work very well, but I blame that on poor implementation rather than a flawed idea.

 

Personally, my preferred method is to have an MSI which I can deploy via GPO Software Installation. You say that some schools are unhappy with the MSI in its current form; though you don't specify what problems some schools have with it, I know from experience that the quality of MSIs can vary greatly. The worst are usually ones built with capture programs such as WinstallLE when the developer hasn't picked out all the unrelated system changes happening during the installation. In my opinion, the best MSIs are ones built from scratch, and that use as few Custom Actions as possible. When building my own MSIs I use Advanced Installer (and not Advanced Repackager), which has never failed to produce a hassle-free installer for me.

[mlapworth]

Thanks for your replies.

 

Your answers to my questions are what I suspected to be the case (but I have to admit I was hoping you'd come back and say "yeah, that's fine - lots of software requires registration on the net"...). Having one installation type that registers via the net would make life much simpler for me, but I won't consider it for the UK if it's going to put people off buying it, obviously.

 

I am not particularly au fait with installation methods, msi installers etc. I'm more involved with the program itself, and I use another 3rd party program to create the installer. I believe one of the issues with the current installer is that it can't be edited in any way - there's no access to the admin features of the msi. (Hope that makes sense..)

 

On the site licence CD there are currently 3 installation options - an single exe installer; a file with an msi extension which seems to contain all of the compressed content for the installatioin; a silent msi option with a 525kb _data.msi file and a cab file containing the compressed content for the installation.

(The single user and 10 user CDs only have the single exe installer, with the idea that they should be installed on each machine separately.)

 

I receive emails every now and then asking me to provide installation instructions for an RMCC3 network (no other type of network seems to require anything extra). With my limited knowledge of all of this, I thought that one msi was much the same as any other...

[maniac]

The other issue you run into when installing software that requires activation is when you re-image machines because they're broken, or have been replaced etc. That then entails calls to licensing companies to get activations reset etc. which can be a real pain.

 

My personal favurite way of dealing with this is an in-house license server that the program can check in with whenever its run to ensure its license is still valid, and you can delete machines from yourself. Our virus checker has a simelar thing, we load in a single key file which licenses the server for x number of machines, then the machines check in with the license server. If we go over, then the program can't be installed on any more machines until be buy more licenses or delete machines that are now redundant etc.

 

Mike.

[sted]

i would suggest any of my schools look elsewhere if every pc needed activating after every install leas filter is ridiculously strict dosent even always allow ms activation never mind a random 3rd party. And if it needs doing manually its a pain of a job and esp if i have to rebuild the odd pc likely to get forgotten

[featured_spectre]

Perhaps having a server based section of the product in which you type in the serial key/activation key which is attained when you buy the product (based upon site licence / up to 100 licences etc.) and it creates an INI file for the application to go to, and does this once every 6 months.

 

That way installations can be silent, and have it to point too the server INI file for registration details. Perhaps that would be a more efficient way of activating the program?

Edited April 3, 2010 by featured_spectre
fixed a few spelling errors

[Arthur]

1) How many educational software titles require registration on each machine in the way outlined above?

Thankfully only one. Our school purchased a site license for a certain media-related application and yet I have to visit each machine to install it and enter our registration details! Not only does this waste my time and needlessly makes my job more difficult, but it implies you don't trust your customers. If I buy a site license for something I expect to be able to install the software on every computer in the school with the minimum of fuss.

 

The other thing that really annoys me about software like this, is that it makes it much harder for the students to actually use the software in the first place because it will only be installed on a very small number of computers which aren't always available because they are being used during other lessons. If the software is for teachers, even more time is wasted arranging for them to bring their laptop to us for the software to be installed manually. Something that should takes minutes, then becomes a task that takes days or weeks.

 

2) How much would a system like this discourage a network manager from installing software which requires registration in this way? Is it the kind of thing which would encourage them to turn to the member of staff or department and say that, sorry, s/he is not able / prepared to install the software

As AngryTechnician said, this would be a deal breaker for me too. I would tell the staff/department to look for an alternative first. If there absolutely isn't one, then I would recommend they do not waste the schools money on a site license since I will not be manually installing the software on > 550 computers.

 

With the exception of the title above, all software at my school uses one of five methods.

 

1) No registration information required at all.

2) School name and serial number are set via MSI properties. This makes it easy to add them via a transform file (MST) or command-line.

3) Installer looks for a license file in the same folder as the MSI (or EXE in some cases). 2D Design from TechSoft is a good example of this.

4) Application reads registration details from the registry (usually HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Developer\NameOfApplication) or with some older software, an INI file located in the installation directory or Windows folder.

5) Application contacts internal license server each time it is launched where it can verify the registration details. SWiSH Max and Sibelius use this method for concurrent licenses. The only disadvantage with this is that it prevents the software being used on staff laptops when they take them home.

 

Any of those would be fine with me, although 2, 3 or 4 (in that order) would be preferable.

Edited April 3, 2010 by Arthur

[Arthur]

I believe one of the issues with the current installer is that it can't be edited in any way - there's no access to the admin features of the msi. (Hope that makes sense..)

By admin features do you mean not being able to edit files within the MSI (like the tm.config file) or something else? I had a very quick look at your trial installer and there doesn't appear to be anything that needs changing by end-users.

 

I receive e-mails every now and then asking me to provide installation instructions for an RMCC3 network (no other type of network seems to require anything extra). With my limited knowledge of all of this, I thought that one msi was much the same as any other...

RM CC3 networks aren't really that much different from vanilla networks in terms of software installation. To make it as simple as possible you could do what RM do with a lot of their software and create a self-extracting EXE that copies the MSI, package.ini and shortcut(s) to the correct location on the Q:\ drive. All they would have to do then is update the package list via the RM Management Console and allocate the software to the computers that need it.

[pete]

I sell a piece of software called TaskMagic. Installation currently does not require registration of any kind and it is possible to use a silent msi install to install it to all machines on a network (although not all schools are 100% happy with the msi in its current form).

 

Our lot use your software. From an IT perspective the only real annoyance is the pointless default password that they can never remember.

 

In response to your queries:

 

1) None that we've bought. There's always an alternate piece of software.

2) You'd lose sales. If your software required per-machine Internet registration I'd have vetoed the purchase and we'd have bought an alternate product. A manual process on hundreds of different machines makes your software too expensive to be worthwhile - the opportunity cost in technician time isn't worth it.

[mlapworth]

By admin features do you mean not being able to edit files within the MSI (like the tm.config file) or something else? I had a very quick look at your trial installer and there doesn't appear to be anything that needs changing by end-users.

 

You're right that there's nothing that needs changing for the trial version.

 

The licensed version isn't very different, but it would be useful if the end user cold modify tm.config before installation - that way the end user could specify a network path to which to copy the registration details when the program is registered, and I could add code to the program asking it to look in tm.config for the path for registration details.

 

This would mean that the software would only need to be registered once (following installation, and while connected to the internet) for all machines that are connected to the network. I'm presuming it isn't possible to modify the contents of tm.config, though. At least, I can't see how the end user can do this. But if they could, would that kind of registration work OK in schools, do you think?

 

A separate issue is one of updates. At present, updating my software means replacing the existing exe files with new ones that can be downloaded from my website. I've been told that this is very difficult, as it either means copying manually to each machine or writing some kind of script. I spoke to someone who said that what they would like to be able to do is replace the exes from the CD installer with the new ones and then run the msi again (or somehting like that), but that they had no way of adding to or modifying the msi... I guess I could provide the updates as a new msi. Do you think tha would be preferable?

 

"2) School name and serial number are set via MSI properties. This makes it easy to add them via a transform file (MST) or command-line."

- I think that this is the kind of thing that isn't available in my current msi.

Edited April 4, 2010 by mlapworth
ommission of final point

[AngryTechnician]

The licensed version isn't very different, but it would be useful if the end user cold modify tm.config before installation - that way the end user could specify a network path to which to copy the registration details when the program is registered, and I could add code to the program asking it to look in tm.config for the path for registration details.

TechSoft 2D Design uses something similar to this. The registration details for the program are kept in a file outside the MSI (and not in a .cab file) but in the same directory, and it can be replaced with the correct details for the individual school without altering the MSI itself. In my experience it works well.

[mlapworth]

OK, so I've realised I can make an msi and keep all of the files and folders outside the msi, unpackaged, so that the whole thing can be copied to the end user's computer, modified as necessary and then installed. (I didn't know this was possible - - I told you I wasn't au fait with the installer side of things.)

 

So how does this sound?

 

1) An msi installer that performs a per machine installation.

2) A configuration file that can be modified to include a network path to which all registration data will be saved. The default setting will be to require each computer to register while connected to the internet (so this is what would happen for example on a laptop not connected to the network), but if a network path is specified, the software need only be registered on the installation machine. The configuration file will tell the program where to store and look for registration information, so once this has been done once on the installation machine, subsequent launches of the program on other machines will look in the network location for registration information (which it will then copy to the local machine).

3) If the CD is set up so that the user has full access to all of the files to be installed, presumably this means that the same msi can be used to perform updates, simply by replacing the existing ones on the CD with the most up-to-date versions.

 

Would this work? Or am I missing some fundamental point?

[Kipling]

Like everyone else here I seem to spend a ridiculous amount of time fighting, cajoling and coaxing programs to work on a network. It’s all too common for programs, which are otherwise very good, to have painful installation requirements.

Some companies get it very right (autograph springs to mind) and have an excellent configuration program and an easy rollout; some get it very wrong (like rising-stars assessments).

 

It’s good to see a developer doing some market research in this area.

 

My best advice to you is to forget all the registration faff; all it will achieve is disgruntled network managers / IT techs.

If you are collecting registration information to get usage data then just do it transparently in the background, if you are collecting it to protect your software – then fair play to you, but I think you’ll find that most of us will go out of our way to keep within a licence agreement at school.

 

In terms of install configuration, if it will run from a unc share (a real one, eg, \\server\programs\languages\taskmagic) without requiring any form of write access, or if it has an msi and (optionally) a transform (with a custom editor ideally) then that’s about as easy and smooth as it gets and everybody will be happy

[Arthur]

It’s good to see a developer doing some market research in this area.

Definitely agree with you on this. If only all developers did this our lives would be significantly easier.

 

OK, so I've realised I can make an msi and keep all of the files and folders outside the msi, unpackaged, so that the whole thing can be copied to the end user's computer, modified as necessary and then installed.

This was exactly what I was going to suggest.

 

So how does this sound?

As Kipling said above, the majority of network managers/IT techs are honest, so if there is any possibility of not requiring registration that would be ideal. However, if you do need customers to do this, both Kipling's and AngryTechnician's examples sound like a very good compromises. As with TechSoft's 2D Design you could display the license details on a splash screen or somewhere within the GUI of TaskMagic itself so it would be clear when a school is running more copies than they are licensed for. Example attached.

 

One potential issue I can see with item 2 in your list is what happens if staff want to use Task Magic on a computer that isn't always connected to the school network e.g. their school issued laptop which they almost always take home with them? Despite the program having been successfully registered previously, Task Magic will not work because it won't be able to find the registration data on the network.

 

For item 3, another thing to watch out for when users replace files with newer copies of the same file are the Windows Installer file versioning rules. The default file versioning flow charts show how this process works for unversioned files like the ones in your Samples folder. You would need to test out this scenario thoroughly to make sure it works perfectly (both installation and uninstallation). There's nothing worse than an installer which leaves files behind after it has been uninstalled.

 

What about something like this?

 

1) An MSI that performs a per machine installation with files stored uncompressed externally (as described above).

2) The Task Magic MSI copies a license file (called something obvious like "tm.license" or "tm.lic") to the install folder during installation. This would be located in the same folder as the MSI. In order to do this as part of the installation you would need to include some sort of dummy license file which will have to be overwritten with the real license file BEFORE Task Magic is deployed to computers. When Task Magic runs, it verifies the license file and works as normal if everything checks out. If there is a problem or it can't find this file, either...

 

* Display an appropriate message telling the user to contact thier IT Dept. for assistance or the person responsible for the installation.

* Fall back to a mode where the user can't save anything, the program has very restricted functionality or doesn't work at all until the correct license file is supplied.

* Check an optional pre-defined registry key which specifies an alternate path to the license file. Some customers may want to keep the license file in a central location on the network for security reasons (although this would prevent use of the program at home). For example...

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MDLSoft\TaskMagic]
"License"="\\ServerName\ShareName\TaskMagic\tm.license"

 

3) IT Manager/Technician/computer-literate teacher could download a newer version of your MSI (and associated files) and overwrite all of them with up-to-date copies of the same files. If they are on a CC3 network they can simply re-allocate the package to install the latest version.

[mlapworth]

Thanks for the replies. I really appreciate the time taken to ive me your considered responses.

 

I agree with what you say about the honesty of schools / technicians / IT staff in UK schools, and I have had no problem with selling a version that didn't need registering at all. BUT what I am trying to do now is come up with one version of the TaskMagic exe files that can work as a single user, 10 user or site licence version, and that can be used for the UK as well as for other areas where I am told that trusting in the honesty of schools and their employees is not a good idea. I could carry on with the same setup in the UK as I have always had, but this would necessitate separate versions of the exe files, and I'm trying to make things simpler (for me at least ).

 

"One potential issue I can see with item 2 in your list is what happens if staff want to use Task Magic on a computer that isn't always connected to the school network e.g. their school issued laptop which they almost always take home with them? Despite the program having been successfully registered previously, Task Magic will not work because it won't be able to find the registration data on the network."

- My idea was that either

(i) laptop users would install the software separately to their laptops directly from the installation CD, registering their copy directly via the internet, or

(ii) whenever the TaskMagic programs are run on any computer, they will look in the specified location for the reg details, and if the same details are not already present on the local machine, the details would be copied to the local machine (to the all users directory, for example, or to the registry). Would that be feasible? This would mean that the reg info should always be present on the local machine.

 

My idea is that there will be a splash screen - a bit like the one suggested by Arthur - which will say who the software is licensed to and what type of licence it is.

[Arthur]

I see what you mean about making things simpler. It would definitely be much easier to sell the same version to both UK and international customers.

 

For single and 10 user licenses perhaps an internal license server may be the best way to go then, with an "offline" mode like Valve's Steam software has. If Task Magic can't contact the license server after 30 days it just stops working (in the same way your trial does). A longer period of time like Nephilim suggested would be much better though to account for the summer holidays or pregnant teachers working from home.

 

For site licenses, you could do away with the license server requirement and instead get the program look for a file on the local HDD instead. This could be one of the selling points for the site license to encourage people to buy this version in the first place or upgrade from the single/10 user licenses.

 

the details would be copied to the local machine (to the all users directory, for example, or to the registry). Would that be feasible? This would mean that the reg info should always be present on the local machine.

If Task Magic was running under a standard/restricted user account it wouldn't be able to write to the "All Users" folder (or the ProgramData folder on Vista/7). The same applies to the registry since users wouldn't have the necessary permissions to write to the HKLM key. Edited April 4, 2010 by Arthur

[kearton]

A separate issue is one of updates. At present, updating my software means replacing the existing exe files with new ones that can be downloaded from my website.

When we installed TaskMagic the MSI installed v2.1.3, but when I checked the website there was an upgrade to v2.1.6 - this involved downloading 2 .EXE files to replace. I asked for an MSI installer but was told there wasn't one. I ended up creating a new MSI myself containing the 2 files and installed this over the top of the original MSI. It would be handy if you could provide your future upgrades in MSI format too...

[mlapworth]

If Task Magic was running under a standard/restricted user account it wouldn't be able to write to the "All Users" folder (or the ProgramData folder on Vista/7). The same applies to the registry since users wouldn't have the necessary permissions to write to the HKLM key.

 

OK, I thought that might be the case. Is there anywhere else I could copy the info to that could be accessed by all users? If not, I could always put it in a "registration" folder in the current user's documents folder, or copy it to the HKCU section of the registry.

[mlapworth]

When we installed TaskMagic the MSI installed v2.1.3, but when I checked the website there was an upgrade to v2.1.6 - this involved downloading 2 .EXE files to replace. I asked for an MSI installer but was told there wasn't one. I ended up creating a new MSI myself containing the 2 files and installed this over the top of the original MSI. It would be handy if you could provide your future upgrades in MSI format too...

 

Yes, I think we'll try to do that.

[Kipling]

If not, I could always put it in a "registration" folder in the current user's documents folder, or copy it to the HKCU section of the registry.

Definitely avoid doing that, it would mean us copying it into every uses “documents” folder or making changes to appdata etc in profiles, the same goes for HKCU – that again will mean making changes to users profiles. If you need to store registration data, it can be stored in HKLM (a standard user can read that, just not write to it) or in a file on the local machine (“Program Files” folder is perfectly readable to standard users). An installer will be able to write to either of those locations whether it is done locally (assuming installed by admin) or through an msi & gpo setup.

 

Where do you currently store your registration data? – in the registry I’m guessing?

 

 

 

I don’t think you are going to find an easy one size fits all solution but to amalgamate some of the suggestions in this thread, how about this possibility:

(Given that you’d like to only have to maintain one version and that we’d like to avoid per machine registration; this should only require a very simple change to your main program)

 

• Issue your software as an MSI (almost) exactly as it is now.
  
• Allow people to register by hand if they wish or if they only have a few licences.
  
• Issue an additional MSI to site-wide licence holders which does nothing more than set a few registry keys in HKLM with data about the licence owner/school info.
  
• Your software then simply checks for that key:
  
  • If its there, then don’t bother with all the registration checks, allow the program to run and display a splash screen detailing ownership/usage permissions etc.
    
  • If the key is not there then perform whatever checks you currently perform to see if the program has been registered by hand.
    

 

Advantages

You only have to maintain one program.

Not a big change to your current code base to accomplish the changes.

Network admin will be happy with the simple install.

Home users / staff laptops not on the domain will be able to use the program.

Upgrades will not affect the site licence side of things.

 

Disadvantages

Not super secure in a software protection sense (although you could scramble/encrypt the data in the registry keys to help)

 

 

 

How does that sound?

[Arthur]

OK, I thought that might be the case. Is there anywhere else I could copy the info to that could be accessed by all users? If not, I could always put it in a "registration" folder in the current user's documents folder, or copy it to the HKCU section of the registry.

 

Definitely avoid doing that, it would mean us copying it into every uses “documents” folder or making changes to appdata etc in profiles, the same goes for HKCU – that again will mean making changes to users profiles. If you need to store registration data, it can be stored in HKLM (a standard user can read that, just not write to it) or in a file on the local machine (“Program Files” folder is perfectly readable to standard users). An installer will be able to write to either of those locations whether it is done locally (assuming installed by admin) or through an msi & gpo setup.

 

^^ This. I should have mentioned that while ordinary users will have problems writing these locations, Windows Installer or an Administrator-level account won't. Storing files which users shouldn't have access to in their profiles (especially registration data which just needs to be read) or in the registry under HKCU is almost always frowned upon by system admins. Since your MSI will perform a per machine installation, the logical place for registration information would be either a key under HKLM or a file within the installation folder as mentioned above by Kipling. The registry being preferable IMO.

Edited April 5, 2010 by Arthur

[mlapworth]

Thanks for your reply, Kipling.

 

You asked about the current storage of registration data: the current version of TaskMagic doesn't require registration at all.

 

I wasn't really thinking of using HKCU or the docs folder as the main store for reg data. This was just an additional thing done automatically by the program so that if someone installs to their laptop via the network (or however that would work), a copy of the registration info would be stored locally so that the user could use the software on their laptop when not connected to the network. What I had in mind was:

 

a) by default, require registration on each machine over t'internet.

b) BUT allow a path to be specified in tm.config before installation, telling the software where to look for registration info. This means the person installing the software could specify a location on the network to store the registration data, and registration need only be done once.

c) each time the programs are run, they look for the registration info in the specified location (if no location specified then they'd look in the programdata folder and/or the HKLM section of the registry).

d) if there is a specified path in step c above, and this path is available, and regsitration data is present at that location, copy the data from there to the local machine (BUT THE QUESTION IS WHERE? HKCU was what I suggested as a possibility in my previus post, because Arthur said that user permissions would not allow the data to be stored in HKLM or in the all users directory / program data directory).

e) if there is a specified path at step c, but the path is not available, look for the data locally (eg. in HKCU or wherever is the best place to store this - see d above)

f) if the data canot be found in any of the above locations, presumably it hasn't been registered, so show the registration screen, requiring the user to input the registration key provided, and to be connected to the internet.

g) The first time the school technician installs and runs the software, s/he will arrive at step f above. If they have specified a network path to store the registration data by modifying tm.config before installation, no other users will need to register, unless the network installation isn't applied to their particular computer.

 

Steps d and e are only really needed for those situations where a computer has the programs installed as part of the network installation (and so has the tm.config file installed telling it to look on the network for registration info) and that computer is then used without a connection to the network.

 

Would this work? If so, where is a good place to put the reg data in steps d / e above?

 

I like your idea Kipling. But I'd like to go one step further in the sense that, if possible, as well as having only one exe file, I'd like to have only one installation CD (ie. avoid separate single user / 10 user / site licence versions).

[Dos_Box]

Crazy Talk uses a similar system, but goes one step further by actually negating the serial number once registered, so that you have to contact the company to get new ones should you wish to reinstall. I know schools who have refused to purchase it due to the amount of network maintenance time it would cause. Nice software. Lousy licensing method = lost sales. Edited December 15, 2011 by Dos_Box