How do Shareware apps expire on Windows?

-2

I have some sharewares that are time bound. When I used to run these on XP, probably due to registry access thing, the time never incremented. I mean, a 15 day trial app would be stuck at "1 day finished and 14 remaining" for years! Needless to say I was pretty ecstatic to see this as those and similar apps would promptly expire in previous Windows, and it was completely serendipitous.

However, now that I have Windows 7 as my OS, these apps do actually expire! Has something changed in version 7? Why do 7 and XP behave this way? Could someone explain me this please?

Peter

Posted 2011-05-29T11:04:00.387

Reputation: 9

1I removed the part about how to circumvent the restriction... – slhck – 2011-05-29T11:11:22.163

1I knew it was kinda unethcal to put it there but still went on to. You did the right thing, no problem. – Peter – 2011-05-29T11:13:36.380

Answers

How applications deal with license expiry is entirely down to the application.

There are a million and one ways of doing it, and you can bet that every application does it differently.

Thus, the question cannot be answered.

Majenko

Posted 2011-05-29T11:04:00.387

Reputation: 29 007

But still, the real question is the difference between the 2 OS's registry. – Apache – 2011-05-29T16:57:38.113

I would imagine that it was some quirk with the old OS X installation and not some underlying difference. There is no way the software vendors would write a license expiry routine that just plain doesn't work in the current market leading operating system version of the time. – Majenko – 2011-05-29T16:59:14.323