Category : Unprotects for Games and Such
Archive   : PTW.ZIP
Filename : PTW.UNP
How to remove `key' copy protection from yet another program.
A few caveats for those jerks who like to sell software products
which require hardware keys:
- Thanks a lot for writing your program in Lattice C. It's so
easy to trace through; uses no coded JMPs or CALLs.
- Putting only one test for the key in your code? C'mon guys,
you could have done better than that!
- If you were really smart, you would have the key contain a
special hardware decoding algorithm which all calls must reference.
That would make it too troublesome to defuse your test.
Here's how to do it. You will need DEBUG.COM and PTW.EXE on your
default drive.
1) Type COPY PTW.EXE OLDPTW.EXE and press RETURN.
2) Type REN PTW.EXE HACKUP.XXX and press RETURN. We do this so we
can modify the program code, as DEBUG won't write .EXE headers.
3) Type DEBUG HACKUP.XXX and press RETURN.
4) S 0 ffff e8 35 07 85 c0 75 19
and you should see one and only one address displayed as YYYY:XXXX.
Jot down the XXXX part. If you didn't get anything or got more than
one address here, quit. You've done something wrong or it's a different
version.
5) U XXXX
Don't type XXXX here. Just type in the address I told you to write down
(it will be exactly four digits, e.g. 0710)
6) You will see some machine code instructions with their assembler
equivalents. The second or third one will be
(address machine code assembler)
YYYY:XXXX ???? JNZ ZZZZ.
Write down the XXXX and ZZZZ parts. Forget about the old XXXX.
7) A XXXX
JMP ZZZZ
W
and the machine will say Writing xxxxx bytes.
8) Q
and you're (almost) done.
9) REN HACKUP.XXX PTW.EXE
You may now bury your old key in a safe place. You won't need it anymore.
Very nice! Thank you for this wonderful archive. I wonder why I found it only now. Long live the BBS file archives!
This is so awesome! 😀 I’d be cool if you could download an entire archive of this at once, though.
But one thing that puzzles me is the “mtswslnkmcjklsdlsbdmMICROSOFT” string. There is an article about it here. It is definitely worth a read: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/mtswslnk/