Hi all, have read FAQ's, and many tutorials, but still seem to struggle.
I have googled and googled but still cant find myself in the "frame of mind".

The tutorials I have found say things like "set breakpoint at x function and note address" then go to "x address and change the jump location to x" with no explanation, why, how they found that address or even how they came to the conclusion that address was important in any way!

I thought the idea of a tutorial was to learn you basic skills and methods, that you can use on a different exe to find your way around it. Not just follow instructions and hope you understand why you did it!

Obviously I found "some" things helpful, like searching words that appear in program windows in the hope of landing somewhere near useful code. But what I want is to be able to identify important calls and functions ON MY OWN and learn to work with them etc.

Anybody point me in the direction of something useful to read on this?

If this is indeed a quote from a tutorial where the action is explained WITHOUT reason, maybe the tutorial is meant for a specific audience OR the author did not know how to write a good one

Or, you are simply reading the wrong tutorial.

Why do you want to READ when you can see movies?

I mean, go to Tiga's or Lena's VIDEO tutorials about cracking. They start from the very basics also.

An often and very very important part left out by new entrants to cracking field is that they generally want knowledge so bad, the FORGET to master their tools! So don't neglect that aspect too...

Other than that, there is no fixed point in cracking study (like you have in a formal educational system) that will enable you to gradually improve from point A to point Z, Z being the pinnacle of cracking.

Learning cracking is more like collecting rice grains strewn on the floor one by one rather than a train traveling from one station to another (Alternatively, you can search on this forum to find my very interesting analogy about JACKET and DISCO)

Have Phun

Tools is something im struggling with at the minute, I only have a freeware copy of IDA so other than looking around it is useless, I have OllyDBG and Wdasm32. I am currently trying to make softICE work on XP Ive heard that is a lot easier to navigate and use for a beginner (apparently it does most of the work for you). Not getting very far with soft ice mind, without driver studio it doesnt even open, with driver studio it opens a cmdline window and gives an error simliar to process cant run, cant specified path.

I am using driverstudio 3.2
and softice 4.05

I just think I would manage a lot better if I could do most of my editing/tracking/looking in one app, rather than using 5 apps to do 4 jobs.

Yes.

And I think I would manage a lot better if developers put in strings that say "crack here" or better, software that automatically cracks itself!!

Get movin' you lazy git!!!



Have Phun

LMAO, I meant I am following tutorials etc ( or another example an e-book on IDA pro) and when it comes to performing something or editing something the tuorial explains how to set about this in IDA pro BUT i cant access these functions in IDA so i have to go away and find something else to perform this function.

The more time i spend jumping apps, and trying to re-find my location the easier i forget what i was trying to do!

Those video tutorials are excellent though, thank you for them, its something i never thought of searching for.

Ive ditched IDA for now its pretty useless now I know about the API in Ollydbg.

Thanks once again!