I just had an idea, Id like some critical feedback on it... basically, i want my program to have two license options - single user, and multi-user... if its a single-user license, then only one computer in the LAN should be able to run my program.
Here is my idea on one way of possibly enforcing a single-user license so that only one computer in the LAN can have my program installed...
All Windows machines as far as I know have two 'public network fields' - a computername, and a description.
When my app launches (single-user license), it should make sure that the last character in its local description field is set to chr$(160), which is a visually space character, but not the real space character. Then, it should get a list of machines in the LAN (im sure theres already code posted to do that), and then grab the description field for each one also. If any of the computers have chr$(160) at the end of their description, then your program can tell that another copy of your program is installed on another computer. Obviously your uninstall program should remove the 160 character from the end.
Any thoughts on this? I wouldnt want to ever modify the computername field, but appending chr$(160) to the description field seems harmless enough.. ?
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Here is my idea on one way of possibly enforcing a single-user license so that only one computer in the LAN can have my program installed...
All Windows machines as far as I know have two 'public network fields' - a computername, and a description.
When my app launches (single-user license), it should make sure that the last character in its local description field is set to chr$(160), which is a visually space character, but not the real space character. Then, it should get a list of machines in the LAN (im sure theres already code posted to do that), and then grab the description field for each one also. If any of the computers have chr$(160) at the end of their description, then your program can tell that another copy of your program is installed on another computer. Obviously your uninstall program should remove the 160 character from the end.
Any thoughts on this? I wouldnt want to ever modify the computername field, but appending chr$(160) to the description field seems harmless enough.. ?
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