My question is very basic. How do trial periods work? Where do applications usually store the information on your computer that tells them that the trial has expired? Any suggestions on how to extend trials would also be valuable. I'm not looking to crack the installer at this time, I just want to know how programs handle trial periods. Thanks for any help.

the answers are too various, theres multiple methods the programs could use, and multiple places they could store the information, and something tells me you probably didnt read the faq at all or bother searching

I did read it, but i am still a bit confused.

The trial system works by saving the date/time at which the application was installed, then comparing this with the current time at runtime (generally at startup).
The data can be stored just about anywhere you can permanently store information. Software authors have been known to use locations as simple as the registry or an ini file and as complex as creating a (not so temporary) tempfile whose CRC can be XORed into a time structure.

Locating these data is generally an impossible task without reverse-engineering the executable in order to find out what it does. Hence removing/extending trial periods is done most often by patching the binary itself rather than locating and editing the installation fingerprint data.

Thank you, I remember back when things were really simple, like reg settings or ini settings, those were always fun to play with, but I have not seen them in temp files before, i think I'll have to go looking for that. Trying to get back back in the game, well, for me its a game anyhow. I just do it because its fun and challenging, not of any real desire to use such program.

Suprisingly a lot of them still keep the time period in the code, do a search for the hex value representing the trial period - in IDA you would search for 1Eh for 30 days, make sure you put a space before the value when searching or you'll get too many hits on code addresses that end in 1Eh, if found it's pretty obvious whether this is an elapsed time section of code.

SiGiNT