This section provides possibilities for selecting the type of locking the registration key to system hardware or user data. The Enigma Protector has a set of features that provide possibilities to create registration keys locked to a specific computer. These keys will work on just one computer. You can find detailed information on using hardware-locked registration keys in the description of the EP_RegHardwareID function of the Enigma API description section. See also the Keys Generator section.

Types of locking:

Volume Serial Drive - the serial number of the system partition of the hard drive;
System Volume Name - the name of the system partition of the hard drive;
Computer Name - the computer name (name of the currently active system user);
CPU type - the type of CPU;
Motherboard - information from the motherboard BIOS;
Windows Serial Key - the serial key of the installed Windows;
Windows User Name - the name of the currently active Windows user account.

Locking type	Is the same in different operating systems	Is the same after the hard disk drive is formatted or modified	Can be modified by the user	Can be the same on different computers
Volume Serial Drive	yes(*1)	no	yes (*4)	seldom
System Volume Name	yes(*1)	defined by user (*2)	yes	seldom
Computer Name	defined by user	defined by user (*3)	yes	seldom
CPU type	yes	yes	no	often
Motherboard BIOS	yes	yes	no	seldom
Windows Serial Key (*6)	no	yes	no	seldom
Hard Disk Serial Number (*5)	yes	the same only after formatting	no	no
Windows User Name	defined by user	defined by user (*3)	yes	seldom

(*1) The condition is effective if operating systems are installed on the same partition of the hard disk drive and the system partition is not changed or formatted.

(*2) The condition is effective if the user enters the same partition name as it was before formatting.

(*3) Formatting or changing a system partition means reinstallation of the operating system. This condition can be accomplished if the user enters the same computer/user name that was in the previous operating system.

(*4) This change can be made only with the help of special software.

(*5) Hard Disk Serial hardware lock failed to get the serial number if the operation system is installed on a RAID hard disk drive. Usually, the number of RAID disks is no more than 2-5% of all users.

(*6) Windows Serial Key hardware lock may return the same values on the corporate/company version of Windows. If your software mainly belongs to company users, it is recommended to use it together with Windows User Name hardware lock.

Advice: since there are a lot of hardware/software things to generate the hardware ID, it may be difficult to select the best configuration. Our recommendation is to initially use Hard Disk Serial Number + CPU + Motherboard hardware lock. These parameters remain same after formatting and reinstalling the operation system, they can't be the same on multiple computers and have a small percentage of failures.

Allow Changes - specifies the number of selected hardware changes. This feature will keep the registration key valid, until the selected hardware is changed the selected number of times. Why can hardware ID be changed? This could happen due to execution permissions (for example, if a motherboard lock is enabled and the program runs under Windows XP as an administrator for the first time, and without administrator privileges for the second one, it causes hardware ID change) or due to hardware update (such as changes of the Hard Disk, motherboard, etc) or due to user changes (a computer name or system volume name). Not recommended to use until hardware id often changes for your users.

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Hardware Lock