Hiya girls/guys/whatever

Here is my problem, I need to reset the date of ALL the files on my computer to January 1, 2002. Does anyone have a utility or know of a program to do this? FYI I am running windows 98SE, soon to be windows XP. This program somehow checks the date of EVERY file, if beyond a certain date it doesn't run.

Yes I do know the trick of setting the bios clock back, installing the operating system, and programs, then backing it up with DriveImage. In three months reformat the hard drive, reinstall good for another 3 months. The solution works but YUCK it's not eligant.

BTW I assume this post belongs under General not Newbies.

Thanks for all your help.

MTB

Hi there:

Use TouchFileTimes to code a small proggie that can recursively traverse all dirs and "touch" the times. You can set the time in the SYSTEMTIME structure. Look up in MSDN under IMAGEHELP.DLL section. But this is only supported in Win2K (may be XP also).

"This program somehow checks the date of EVERY file, if beyond a certain date it doesn't run. "

By, "EVERY" do you mean *ALL* the files on your drive or only select files. Because if it is the former, then it is certainly amusing form of protection

Signed,
-- FoxThree

Hello MTB !

Are you planning to run under a wrong date all the time? If you set all file's date to 1. January, the next write to USER.DAT, SYSTEM.DAT or SYSTEM.INI will set their date's to the system date. I don't think the program you're talking about checks all file dates, only some specific, like the ones above and maybe some other files too which aren't written at every reboot. The program could also check directory dates. It is very difficult to set a directory's date, so beware of that.

I always use the program FD.EXE, a DOS application from Norton Utilities. It can set any file's date of last modification in all subdirectories. With an one byte patch it can also set file creation time and file access time to what you like.

Two observations:

I think when you say EVERY file you mean any files or files at random. It would take an awful ammount of time to comb through all the files in your HD and check the date in each one of them.

Changing all the file dates is neither an elegant solution. Sooner or later time will pass and some files are going to be updated to the current date, unless you plan to freeze the time in your computer to 1/1/02 just to run an application.

I would try to taget the mechanism that the app uses to read the the dates of some files and disarm it.

Fellow reversers

Here are some more details.

Got a demo lic for a piece of software (FEM). The usual string stuff with a start and stop date.

It didn't run on my machine. So after going round and round with tech support (California), I finally get hooked up to the security manager. He has me scan my hard drive for files greater than the experiation date of the lic. There were 10 files. Deleted some of them, copied others in command prompt, etc.

It worked! Of course when the 15 day trial arrived the software stopped.

The software normally has a sentinnel dongle attached to it.

After some more digging into the mess of directories it has I found the dreaded flexm stuff. Oh well I attack the dongle end it should be a lot easier.

BTW thanks for Norton Utilities lead DakienDX.

Thanks
MTB