Many programs coming out these days are not copy protected in the usual
way, in that it is possible to make copies easily, but it asks for a
word from a certain page of the manual before letting you continue. Even
if you can find your manual, it's a nuisance to say the least. So most
"cracks" today are the removal of this check. It is often very simple,
and I'll use a new game, "Mean Street" to illustrate. By the way, this
is an excellent game, with true VGA graphics, and digitised sound,
emanating from your speaker. It is like an adult version of "Where in
the World is Carmen Sandiago". In order to remove the question about the
manual, you need to "borrow" a manual, at least for a couple of minutes!
When you are asked for a word, write down the word. do this several
times, until you have 2 - 3 words written down. Then use PC Tools to
search all the files, starting with the main program, in this case
MS.EXE. Sure enough, PC Tools finds a list with all the key words in it.
At this point you want to use PC Tools editing function to change these
words to something you'll remember, or, better still, use the Hex editor
to change them all to 00 's. Make sure you start with the first letter
of the first word, and change them all up to, and including, the last
letter. How did I decide on 00 's ? Well, if you compare the ASCII with
the Hex, you'll see that the "delimiter" between the words is a 00. In
the case of other programms it could be something else. In that case,
just use what is between each word, and blank out everything. Now, when
it asks for a word, simply hit "ENTER" and away you go ! If you try this
and find it works for you, please post the name of the program for the
rest of us. Oh, and with Mean Street, you'll STILL need the manual for
clues etc., but it is available on disk from several excellent BBS's
<grin>. I can hot-key into PC Tools from the game, and read the manual
when I need to.

By the way, here's a list of the words, in the right order, from Mean
Street.

        mean going realsound is the before layer fog streets an fly data
        here have of visit down that find gun all you extra and keep log

Now, get cracking !

>>> Mike <<<


 Entered on Sun  12-03-1989  at 16:47:02  from Cobble Hill BC Canada