FingerPrint Viewing

SoftwareShield System Feature Guide > FingerPrinting / Machine Locking > FingerPrint Viewing

## FingerPrint Viewing

You may wish to see exactly what the internal information returned from the FingerPrint sub-system used in SoftwareShield is. In order to do this, you can easily use either the FingerPrint Viewer application, or the integrated FingerPrint Viewer in the SoftwareShield License manager.

The FingerPrint Viewer application is a simple stand-alone application that you can easily copy to any machine and execute with no other supporting files required. When run, you will be able to examine how that particular machine configuration responds internally to your licenses set of FingerPrint Option Flags and possibly even your own FingerPrint values (See Programmer Created FingerPrint Identifiers).

The integrated FingerPrint Viewer in the SoftwareShield License Manager behaves exactly the same as the stand alone FingerPrint Viewer application. Both versions allow you to save the output of a test to a text file. Both versions allow you to configure the FingerPrint options flags to match your license.

When examining the output, you can see three views of the FingerPrint:

1. Pre-processed internal values. This shows you a list of exactly what the information is that the machine the viewer is on returns to the FingerPrint sub-system before it is turned into an actual FingerPrint.

2. Full-Length FingerPrint. This is a 256-bit value (shown as a hex string). This provides approximately 1.15 * 10^77 unique full-length FingerPrints. This full-length FingerPrint is the FingerPrint used in the list of authorized systems in a Copy-Protected license.

3. Embedded FingerPrint. This is a 26-bit value (shown as a decimal string). This provides approximately 67.1 million unique embedded FingerPrints. This embedded FingerPrint is the one that is embedded inside Activation Codes and Authorization Request Codes.

#### More Information

For help on actually using the SoftwareShield FingerPrint Viewer Application, see the SoftwareShield FingerPrint Viewer Reference.

For help on using the integrated FingerPrint Viewer in the SoftwareShield License Manager, see View FingerPrint in the SoftwareShield License Manager Reference.