AutoHotkey Community

Stranger · Guest

Hi,
I'd like to know if there is anyway to get the old volume serial number after formating the hard disk?! some softeawr won't run if the volume serial number changed .. I know that there 're many utilities to change the current volume serial number but how to get the old one after the formating so I can restore the original state.?

thanks for any help!

procyon · Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 14 Location: Tallinn, Estonia

Volume serial number is calculated based on the time of formatting, so unless you know it with the precision of 1/100 of a second there is no way of restoring it to old value

Edit: btw. this is certainly not the forum where to ask it. No relevance to AHK whatsoever.

Guest · Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 10:49 pm Post subject:

Just a thougt, Most programs that rely on vol ser actualy look at the HHD serial not the vol id. As the the man said,once its formatted goodbye vol id.

notice I use the term vol_id not vol ser....

(just so as to pass jonny's proofreader) Laughing

Dippy46 · Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2005 10:58 pm Post subject:

Deary Me, can't condone that statement (not relevant to ahk).
Quite the contrary, everything that happens on a computer is relevant to Ahk, that's why ahk is such a popular environment.

Under certain secure environments it would be interesting to know how come the vol_id changed.....

QED.
_________________
Simple ideas lie within reach, only of complex minds

procyon · Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 14 Location: Tallinn, Estonia

Dippy46 · Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2005 12:46 am Post subject:

Yes but the point was that YOU might want to know WHY the user had reformatted the disk. or that your software had been moved to another computer for which it was NOT intended.....
_________________
Simple ideas lie within reach, only of complex minds

procyon · Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 14 Location: Tallinn, Estonia

I personally think that there are several better ways to determine, if software was moved to another system. vol_id will change also when using disk clones to restore a backed up copy of system after viruses etc. So locking user out because of changed vol_id is a really bad idea imho.
Also this protection method is only usable, when software is rewritten for every system it is intended for (with previous knowledge what the vol_id of this system is), because even if you store the vol_id somewhere on first run, it will be gone if user reformats and reinstalls windows. And you still need the list of valid vol_id -s on first run..... can't really imagine how to get it when it's not built in. Well..... of course I imagine that an encrypted list on some website that the program will download, encrypt and compare to on first run, would work, but this is a very cumbersome solution.

@Stranger - can't you just uninstall and reinstall te program that refuses to run? How does this program know what the original vol_id was?