Changing the serial in the registry ?

[Seb_Lz]

Hello,

As I had many problems playing with my brothers together at the same time on the internet, I recently bought a new copy of Emperor. In my registry, I can find a key named "serial" (@ HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREWestwoodEmperor). The problem is if i change the value of this key to the new serial digits (without the "-"), the game just doesn't work because the serial doesn't seem to be valid to Emperor (idd, the numbers aren't in the right order). How can I change my serial without reinstalling the game ?

[Apollyon]

You can't.

[rigel6669]

Just delete the previous 1 and install the new copy that you have bought

[cbrick04]

The serial is encoded and will only match the machine on which it was installed. You cant change it as App said.

[Navaros]

You can't.

i disagree that "you can't"

i am sure there are people who would be able to make a Key Changer program that would do this function.

[Apollyon]

Actually, you really can't. If the game finds discrepencies in the registry serial coding it just won't run. Perhaps I'll redefine it further to say that no one without aid of the source code can make a tool by which the serial code may be changed without reinstalling the game. As for a NoCD Crack, I made one for myself that works adequately well.

[Seb_Lz]

Ok, ty for your answers anyways

[XTF]

Actually, you really can't. If the game finds discrepencies in the registry serial coding it just won't run. Perhaps I'll redefine it further to say that no one without aid of the source code can make a tool by which the serial code may be changed without reinstalling the game. As for a NoCD Crack, I made one for myself that works adequately well.

Actually, you can. And you can do it without the source code.

[Apollyon]

Really? Please do tell.  :)

[Harkdawg]

lol Apo, eating your words!

Im no programmer really but doing that shouldnt be hard,ive changed many keys without reinstalling games (not for emp tho), and someone saying "it cant be done" is beign rather moronic  :O

[Apollyon]

I was saying it from experience as I've tried it a lot.

But if you think you can do it go ahead, dawg.  ::)

[erjin999]

I heard a saying once, ahem:

If an old scientist says it can be done, it probably can.

If an old scientist says it cannot be done, he probably doesnt have the vision.

Plus, thats basic cracking/reverse engineering, isn't it ? Maybe not basic to do it, but basically thats what reverse engineering is about in this kind of scenario.

[SurlyPIG]

Naturally, your CD key is saved in the registry.  As said before, you can check this by running RegEdit, navigating to the following value directory:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareWestwoodEmperor

and looking at the "Serial" value on the right.  Clearly it's a form of your CD key, as it's the same number of digits (22).

However, it's encoded in some way.  You can check this by comparing the "Serial" value in the registry to your actual CD key.  They're different.

Unfortunately, you can't determine your CD key from the reg value, or edit your CD key in the registry without knowing how it is encoded.  In other games, I've seen programs that do all the decoding/encoding and editing for you (a cd-key changer for Diablo II was what it was) but I've never heard of anything like that for emperor.  I have no idea how to go about it, but I'm sure there are people who could do it though.  Evidently Olaf is one of them.  You'll just have to reinstall emp with a new key unless Olaf tells us how.

[Navaros]

once again we see that my original comments were 100% right.

[XTF]

Really? Please do tell.

[cbrick04]

I have installed this game on 2 seperate machines running the exact, same software and the codes generated do not interchange. This leads me to believe that hardware, an/or time of install play factors in the code. So as far a "you cant", you, Nav , cant. And neither can anyone else.