Unique Serial Numbers

[ColinD]

I need to prevent the installer been run on more than one machine within an organisation.
However I do not know what its Ip, LAN or anything will be, as this software will be distrubuted to many organisations, who in turn have many sites.

What I would like to achieve is a SF Serial code initially, then a secondary code that is unique to that machine and needs validating by us, which in turn gives them another code that only works on that machine. Or skip the first code and just generate a UID for that machine.

This is the first time I'm trying to write an installer and I would like to know if this is possible, or just go down the route of trust/web log of installs.

Any ideas?

Other than go on site and install it?

[Henk]

I'm whispering in your ear so that nobody hear: "this feature can be found in a competetive install creator. It reads the unique id of the hard disk and adds that to the code. This way it's impossible to install it on different machine without notifying you.
sssshh...

[Lorne]

Yes it's possible.

You could use the built-in variable %LANNIC% which holds the MAC address of the user's network card...each network card has a unique MAC address.

Use a Submit to Web action to send the MAC address to a PHP script (or CGI program) on your server that keeps track of what MAC addresses have already been "used" -- i.e., what machines your setup has been installed on.

Have the installation only proceed if the PHP script said it's okay.

You could even have your PHP script base the return code on the MAC address (apply some simple mathematical formula to it), and have Setup Factory perform the same calculation in an Assign Value action's expression before comparing the results to see if they match.