Hello my fellow naira-guru-landers pls i need help or an advise on how to set a trial period on an application. Say 4 instance i developed a hello world windows app with c# and i want my user to make use of it 4 the period of 7 days. Pls how do i go about this? An illustration is highly needed please. Tanx in advance.

2 options:

1. Your program may query a server to check itself on startup
or
2. create a special zero tolerance time stamp on the system that the program can read from.

@dell_net how can i do that pls.

option 1 requires some network protocol concept,,,option 2 should be put into your registry.

A common way to create a trial is to limit usage days (say 30 days). You can do this by storing the current date in an obscure registry key, when the software is first run (or during installation). Then you check whether the limit has passed everytime your software runs.

For a readymade system which does this, see CryptoLicensing ( http://www.ssware.com/cryptolicensing/cryptolicensing_net.htm ) - it also has other scenarios like max executions, max runtime in minutes, etc.

Sorry I worked with those languages for too long. If you'd like to use my compiler... I Could develop a splash screen and the registration algorithm (using user hardware ID and username to generate a unique key), also the keyreg for ya. It is going to be a small exe app which will point to your main app...if reg is successfull, it will launch your app. If user back dates or tries to manipulate the app, it will "self-destruct" <-- meant that in a nice way...lol