MattHi,I am testing my product on W8 and came across a strange problem; if a key is activated at the end of the trial period, and then deactivated, the trial period appears to be completely restored. I can't be absolutely sure that that is the cause, and its rather hard to test, but there is no doubt that a trial period, that had completely elpased on the test machine, has somehow been restored.This is a potentially big issue for me as I issue free keys for my free version - and this behaviour is a back door to a perpetual trial.
thanks,Matt
deactivated, the trial period appears to be completely restored.
No, that doesn't happen and can't be reproduced here. The trials systems and the "activation" systems are completely separate beats that don't talk to eachother at all. Activate or deactivate it doesn't effect the trials at all.
MattOK - I can accept that it wasn't due to activating keys. Which leaves a trial period on my W8 machine with 13 days remaining, after this same trial period supposedly ran out 2 days ago. I've done nothing to this machine in the mean time, in terms of OS etc. Any ideas? I have never observed this behaviour on W7 machines.
Well, we can't reproduce this here. We do extensive testing on all Windows versions, including Windows 8.
You might want to consider not using "unverified" trials (the UseTrial(), TrialDaysRemaining(), ExtendTrial() functions) and instead use "verified" trials. "Unverified" trials are highly susceptible to fraud and "reset" due to their nature (because a user can "start" the trial without contacting any servers). This is just the nature of all "unverified" trial systems.
That being said, we still can't reproduce the behavior you're experiencing with our "unveririfed" trial system. Did you call ExtendTrial()? Also, are you calling UseTrial() before you call TrialDaysRemaining() -- if not that could be your problem.=?
A "verified" trial is using a regular product key with one or 2 custom license fields that set whether the key is a "trial key" and another field of when the trial expires.
MattHi Sam,Yes, I am calling UseTrial().I have never seen this behaviour before myself, but there is no doubt that a trial has elapsed on this machine (yesterday) after which I activated a license. I deactivated the license today and restarted the application; the trial period showed as 13 days (of 14). Strange indeed.
It might be that you're using UseTrial(TA_USER) instead of UseTrial(TA_SYSTEM). The first will store the trial at the user level (meaning running as a different user or "elevating" the process is enough to give a user more free time. The second stores the trial at the system level. Meaning all users (elevated and not) get the same shared trial time.
MattHi Sam,I am using the parameterless version of UseTrial() - what is the default?Also, there has only been one user on this machine for the whole test period, so I don't think that is an explanation.
thanks,Matt
I am using the parameterless version of UseTrial() - what is the default?
The parameter-less version is TA_USER. So use TA_SYSTEM, that will fix that problem.
