I've patched all the dongle checks but when I plot, the screen zooms out and the 'tile' box jumps to the left. I'm stumped. Any ideas?

I have not taken a close look to your target. However, what you are describing sounds like the protector used results from the dongle as input for the normal flow of the program. That is what the dongle manufacturers recomend, every blue moon, some protectionist use it. This info might be useful to pinpoint the place where the protection is f**king your program.

Try to locate the main hasp call in the program, trace back callers and see what services they represent, with that info you can goto zencrack2.cjb.net and get info on emulateing them. If your program does rely on the returncodes, this is the best thing you can do.

BTW - Signlab last time i cracked it was very poor, during install setup.ins contains a large list of valid serials (last chars is some kind of checksum for dongle or smth)

I emulated the hasp routine very quickly, but im not an expert with this genre of software, could u tell me how u triggered the protection, and if u found more checks like it?

Regards,
Cast

Hi, thanks for the pointers. I'm new to this so please excuse any simple mistakes. I used Wdasm to locate each jump which led to an error message,1 possible error with password,1 Internal error......I found 5 jumps relating to Error locating security device......I've patched all of them successfully but the first seems to control the plot function, it zooms away from the selected object and the set tiles pop up box appears only half on screen, I can drag it back and continue normally, the plot function works perfect.

I tried this target several months ago and almost figured it all out...then Real Life rudely intervened, and I haven't had time
to even think about it again until now. The method described by Jas does work...but I thought it would be cleaner to have
a hasp emulation (and more of a challenge, since I had never reversed a dongle). But to the point....Signlab 5, all revs probably,
calls two hasp api's, IsHasp and HaspId (1 and 6). There are also calls to HaspCode (2), but they seem fake, and I don't think the program would ever call them if patched properly.Bratscher is right. The problem is when the returns of HaspId get checked against the password, I couldn't figure it out.CrackZ said the same thing about the ID being checked to the password. (thanx CrackZ for your pointers in the right direction!) If you would like, I can post or email some code
snippets of where I was at when I had to quit. BTW, check out CrackZ's site for all you need to know about Hasps. Also maybe some of the old +HCU stuff like Frog's Print and
Zafer's essays, and whatever you can download at alladin's site.

regards,
dust

Cast,
I have a list of valid serials. How do I trace the entire list in setup.ins? I'm going down a different track now any trying to emulate the dongle (thanks Bratscher!), I'm think I'm heading in the right direction now but I'm new to this so any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

PS has anyone else worked on Signlab

I'm sorry to tell you, but patching the jumps to get around the error messages will not work. You will need to emulate the dongle in order to have the application function correctly. I don't think what you are seeing is related to the dongle checks but emulating here is key. I cracked a bunch of versions of SignLab including this one and they all been easy.

goatass

Hiya,

I recall SignLab 5, R something or other from a long time back.

I'm probably just repeating everything already stated here but as
I remember the installer had a long list of valid passwords. It
started something like the ones I've given below (there are shed
loads more), note to Woodmann, censor these if you need too.

LX2G91,FTZ79N,FP9BFL,KDS2BJ,86MHTF
XYXT4T,X9D6FY,WJ7L58,5JJGRQ,C92YJJ
0HSZTH,L7413K,C6K8DB,PTK5TB,4F0KYR
WTFP6H,7PV96J,9Q3PPN,1XPC0T,CL01YB
20PH1H,77R6P5,GTJS3C,TZ9TD4,4C0282
DCXHSF,0YWM4C,4MTRRH,XDQ2B0,F47ZNY
2F6G47,J7D603,45MWV3,G0XTFX,3ZW5RY
.....

The main program calls HASP services 1/2 and 6, I don't know
how to use the program personally, but the service 2 checks
didn't appear fake to me, they check out against good
return codes, but again I wouldn't swear to this. The HASP ID
is checked against a response derived from the password.

If you know enough about HASP's you can use my HASP emulator
plus a registry key (create it yourself) and emulate the dongle (see HASP 4 thread in other forum), the guy who posted re: UCL's emu probably is out of luck here, the source code to that emu is on the net and the time expiry stuff is all in there, you
could even compile it out if you can't figure it out.

I also know that goatass has a lot of info. about revisions of SignLab.

Regards

CrackZ.