How to retrieve serial number of OS or CPU for copy protection?

[Klaus Bonadt]

In order to protect software from being copied without licence, I would like
to use something like a key, which fits only to the current system. The
serial number of the CPU or the current operating system would be
appropriate. However, I do not know how to retrieve the information.

Could you help?
Klaus

[Kazi]

Hmmm, It's very interesting. We have about 50 computers on our network, 20
of them are running WinXP or Win2000 (the rest is NT4). 15 are brand PCs, 5
are noname. All of them have this kind of hardware information.
"Klaus Bonadt" <Bo****@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:un**************@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...

I tried on two machines (Win2k and XP), both gave the following result:
Hardware ID:
UUID : FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF
Vendor :
Name :
IdentifyingNumber :
Feedback:

UUID : not valid
Vendor : empty
Name : empty
IdentifyingNumber : empty
Regards,
Klaus

[Duncan Mole]

I wondered if you would consider using the MAC address for this?

http://www.codeguru.com/Cpp/I-N/netw...cle.php/c5451/
"Kazi" <no****@please.com> wrote in message
news:eC**************@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...

I'm researching this problem heavily, and maybe I have found a better
solution. There is a Win32_ComputerSystemProduct class in WMI, which may
contain the information what we need.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en...temproduct.asp
I have created a simple little app (WMI and .Net 1.1 runtime needed), which displays this info and I have run it on several computers. The result a bit surprising to me, almost every computer have this kind of hardware
identification information. The application contains two separate section:
the first section displays the computer identification data (HardwareID),
the second contains the result of checking the data (Feedback).

I would like to ask everybody run my attached app, and please post the
result back to this newsgroup. The result must be on of the following:

-- 1. -------------------------
UUID : ok
Vendor : ok
Name : ok
IdentifyingNumber: ok

-- 2. -------------------------
UUID : not valid
Vendor : ok
Name : ok
IdentifyingNumber: ok

-- 3. -------------------------
UUID : ok
Vendor : empty
Name : empty
IdentifyingNumber: empty

-- 4. -------------------------
The HardwareID not found!

So you can see, the feedback section of my app does not contain any
confidential data. It would be nice to see lot of feedback to get to know,
does it really works.

Thanks in advance:
Kazi

"Klaus Bonadt" <Bo****@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:%2****************@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...

Kazi,

Do you know whether or not, this activation signature is changed when
hardware configuration is modified?
Furthermore, what about OS upgrades? When Longhorn will be installed over XP, is the activation signature affected?

Thanks and regards,
Klaus