How to make software expire on a certain date on Windows? [closed]

Question

I have a piece of Windows/C++ application which includes a hard coded expiry date, so that the release expires and stops running on a certain date like, 30 of august 2009.

Obviously the user can take back the system time to work around this limitation.

Is there a good way to stop my application running if the date has passed even though the user has taken the system date back ?

P.S. I can not make use of an internet connection for this purpose. And I believe writing the last execution time to a file/registry would also be too easy to break.

Thanks.

Paul

Answer 1

Whatever you do will be cracked, so you are better off concentrating on your software rather than the protection. Keep it simple. If people are determined to get around your protection they will. They could even virtual machine it, so day trials are not really a limitation that can be enforced.