Mac computers are generally reliable. But as with any computer, sometimes things go wrong. Before you spend big on a new Mac, though, try a factory reset, which wipes your computer and reinstalls. Reinstall iTunes on Mac. Uninstall the iTunes app in the Application folder. Tip: If iTunes cannot be uninstalled, you can check the guides in Part 3. Go to App Store, download the latest version of iTunes and reinstall it on your Mac. Reinstall iTunes on Windows. Logic Pro X is a complete professional recording studio on the Mac. Try it now with a free 90-day trial.
Normally there are two types of restrictions for shareware. The first one is the demo version with limited or crippled functionality that doesnât have an expiry date and another type is the fully functional trial version that expires after a certain period of time. The amount of days given to try are normally around 30 days but it could be shorter or longer depending on the author of the software. In the earlier days, you can easily run the expired software by simply backdating the date on your Windows operating system but some software has got smarter to detect this and instantly ends the trial period.
You might think to yourself, how does the shareware knows how many days left in the trial period? Most of the time these commercial and freeware protectors drop some information somewhere deep inside your computer after installation so they know when it was installed and then comparing with the official current time pulled from the Internet. It is possible to find the location that records that information by using file or registry monitoring software including third party uninstaller software such as Revo Uninstaller but it can be tedious and frustrating work.
Hereâs a few simpler ways on how you can extend trial periods of software using various different methods.
1. NirSoft RunAsDate
As the name might suggest, RunAsDate performs a trick on the trial software that has expired by injecting the time and date you specify into its process. This has a similar effect to manually setting your system clock to a different time and date, but in this instance your real clock remains unchanged. RunAsDate can also have multiple instances of its program running at once, and each one can have a separate date, all different to the real one.
As a simple example, if youâre using the popular archiver WinZip and its 30 day trial period has expired, it wonât let you use the program anymore, and you either have to purchase a license or uninstall it. Using RunAsDate, you can set the date back to be within the trial period making WinZip usable again. The image below is WinZip after the 30 day trial has passed, note the âUse Evaluation Versionâ is now grayed out.
If you now load up RunAsDate, all you have to do is browse for the application to use the program on, in this case âC:Program FilesWinZipWINZIP32.EXEâ, then choose a date and time from the pop-out calender to before the trial period expired. Now simply press the Run button.
RunAsDate has a few other options such as allow arguments to be applied to the executable, and also a useful option to create a desktop shortcut which will automatically launch the application with the configuration options youâve supplied in the window. The Immediate Mode check box can be used to inject the date/time earlier in the process, but is known to cause crashes on some programs, especially those using .NET.
If you run WinZip after entering the right date and time numbers and press Run or launch it via a shortcut, youâll notice it no longer says expired and the Evaluation button is clickable again. Although time and date altering isnât going to work on all trial software that has an expiry, it is a very quick and easy thing to try out first before turning to more advanced methods.
Download NirSoft RunAsDate
2. Trial-Reset 4.0
This is the final version released in 2010 by âThe Bossâ, and is able to scan and remove 45 types of commercial and freeware protections including some software that uses custom protectors such as Reflexive, Namo, ABBYY, WinRAR, WinZip and etc. In fact if you know the registry location of where the trial information are recorded for a shareware program, you can create your own text file and save it in the Lists folder.
Do note that Trial-Reset does not modify the shareware in anyway. It simply cleans the registry keys generated by the protectors which are normally not removed even after uninstalling the software. This is how a lot of shareware knows you have no trial period left, even if you uninstall and re-install the program again. Trial-Reset is very easy to use. To start scanning, simply click on the All located at the bottom left. The scanning will take a while since some of the methods require scanning the hard drive. The right pane will show all the detected keys that are used by any shareware titles.
You can backup, view or delete the keys, add to protect or auto cleaning list from the right click context menu. If you have a lot of shareware installed, there will be quite a number of results and you will need to do a trial and error to find the key that is associated with the software that you want to reset the trial period.
Download Trial-Reset 4.0 including Source Code
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Stu2 months ago
At one stage, Lotus 1-2-3 (spreadsheet) should be âunlockedâ by carefully HEX editing where the serial number would normally go, with a random number LOL.
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I see these are the âleast intrusiveâ ways to do it. I was watching things on YouTube earlier and saw a bunch of people messing with reverse engineering and debugging with OllyDbg, for example. But thatâs quite complicated stuff.
People can waste months in that thing ending up in nothing. And the example you said that the info is stored on the servers, like MAC address, current IP and other hardware ID stuff that might lead you to a dead-end trying to crack software which you actually will have a lot of work and in a few updates your cracking method is gone (if published widely).
Iâm trying to extend an specific software and this article was pretty useful, actually. Thanks for sharing. Iâll try the last method that interested me. Iâm a bit broke right now, but Iâll see if I can get the donation version, so it can come in handy for some situations, where I canât find specifically cracked software.
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Captain Unknown4 months ago
Hi, Did you find any solution. Iâve used runasdate before but for a specific software its not working. What runasdate does it adds configs to launch as previous date (Which it writes on shortcut). But now when try to open the shortcut the application wont launch. Any help?
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Does this application â Trial Reset â remove the hidden files of Articulate Storyline? Can it detect and remove the keys etc and allow reinstallation of trial software?
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Rishabh9 months ago
Does any of this work with the modern Adobe software? such as photoshop and lightroom?
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which one can be use to extend trial period of treeage?
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king1 year ago
Reset Mac App Store
which one works for trial anti-virus program like avg/kaspersky/bitdefender?
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A slim possibility #4 might do something but software that connects to the internet as much as antivirus does will likely store data about your trial online, which you canât change because itâs held elsewhere.
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Kamaz Uzbekov1 year ago
Where are other three ways?
Reset Mac OsReply
Try page 2â¦
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Alex2 years ago
There is zero reason to ever download, trial, or worse pay for winzip. 7-zip does more, is equally (more?) usable, and is free and open source, with regular releases for Windows.
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Just because you prefer one bit of software over another, doesnât mean you should be instructing others not to use it. Winzip has a different feature set to 7-Zip and they are certainly not equal. If others want to pay for or use Winzip, they are perfectly entitled to do so.
You should be happy thereâs so much choice out there and people have options to choose whatâs best for them.
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Robert10 months ago
For me itâs just a matter of which looks nicer, i donât need any of the extra things 7-zip does.
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thank you sir raymond.
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James2 years ago
Thank a billion! It perfectly works for most of my trial software.
Format hard drive for mac. God bless Devs from RunAsDate and also Mr. Raymon for giving us info about this amazing software. Trial Reset DownloadReply
The first option worked for me. Thank you so much :)
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evans2 years ago
Please does this work on AutoCAD 2012. I just have 15days remaining.
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Any body know how to reset trail date key Reply
I look at the ResEdit only show date I try to download again yesterday I want to know where is date it compair so I can change that date Have to be 30 day Less than current date I greatly appreciated if some can tell me where in registry I can change
EC3 years ago
Filezilla download mac 10.12. LIte Matt I canât find the password â have downloaded the zip file but EVERYTHING needs a password? Any help would be great thank you
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The password is clearly stated on the download pageâ¦
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maucelo3 years ago
Android studio for mac os sierra. can someone tell me if this works for holdemresources? it does not work for me
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Found a better way to extend trial:
Close Quickbooks Delete all the files in this folder: C:ProgramDataIntuitEntitlement Clientv8 Then enter Quickbooks. Reset Trial Mac AppReply
Oto3 years ago
Interesting that for example Sketchup Pro trial doesnât need to be reset. Just switch off internet and change date to future like year 2050 and then install Sketchup. Do not run yet. Change date back to today and then delete %appdata%Sketchup and %localappdata%Sketchup and %programdata%sketchup. Then run it and it will have trial that doesnât expire until year 2050.
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Any suggestions for Toon Boom Harmony
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Mario Green4 years ago
I suggest to run any exe described here with sandboxie to isolate the damage and later delete the files from sandboxie. You also might like to use Oracle VM and mess as much as you like.
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RunAsDate works perfect for any version of LabVIEW.
Thank you very much! It helped a lot.
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Beanstalker5 years ago
Does anyone know if RunAsDate works with QuickBooks. Iâm in month 3 of a 6-month trial that came with a textbook for a class Iâm taking. I still have time, but it would be so nice to be able to hang on to the software when the class is over.
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VIRUS FOUND:
Trojan:Win32/Tulim.C!plock Alert Level: Severe
Category: Trojan
Description: This program is dangerous and executes commands from an attacker.
https://keenlane.weebly.com/openssl-rsageneratekeyex-sample.html. Recommended action: Remove this software immediately.
Items: Reply
file:C:UsersUSERDownloadsTrial-Reset40FinalTrial-Reset40FinalPluginsReflexive.dll
HAL9000 Admin5 years ago
That is obviously a false positive and the file isnât malicious, it happens a lot Iâm afraid.
Like I say to everyone, if you are not comfortable, donât use the program.
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Does any of this work for IDM? if so, which one works the best
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HAL9000 Admin5 years ago
Weâre not sure as we donât use IDM, your only real option is to try things out and seeâ¦
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Iâd suggest trying Free Download Manager instead of trying to extend IDM. I used IDM initially but FDM is just as good if not better and, as the name suggests, free.
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Krishh5 years ago
Rather than extending it, why donât you unlock it manually right away? There are lots of tricks available online!
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After extracting and trying to run the application on windows for trial rest 4.0, it comes with an error.
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Jill5 years ago
Hi â thank you so much for this blog. It has helped me a great deal!!
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It absolutely does work !
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S K Jain6 years ago
Thanks for this much-awaited post. It is a boon for those who can not afford very high price of the software!
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the Trial-reste40final.zip needs a password to open. What is it?
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HAL9000 Admin6 years ago
The password is listed on the page you downloaded the Trial-reste40final.zip from.
Glad you found itâ¦
Reply
Leave a ReplyTime trials hacking
This article aims to give an overall description of various strategies on time trials of software. Its findings are mostly applicable for Mac OS X (Snow Leopard), but some findings are general for other Unices and unix-like systems (Linux). A basic knowledge of Mac (or some other unix or unix-like) system is required.
It is not intended to encourage somebody to repeatedly reset the trial period in purpose to use the commercial software without payment, hence no hints for concrete software are included.
Time trials in general
Time trials allow developers to offer their software to potential customers for a short period of time (generally 2-4 weeks) so the user can explore this software in his preferred settings (own computer, calm place etc.) and decide to buy it. The trial software is sometimes combined with reduced functionality (e.g. if the output is an image, it contains a watermark with the name of the application). After the trial period expires, the application stops work (e.g. Slidepad) or the functionality is significantly reduced (e.g. you cannot save anything â applications from iWork).
Men is generally a curious creature, so he/she wonders how the applications knows, when the trial time started, wether the time trial is over and wether it is possible do some trick (I mean simple trick, not reverse engineering) and reset the trial period.
Common ways how to implement trial time
When you download and install the software with trial time, the application (software) must get know, when the trial period started and wether the trial period is finished. So letâs think how to tell the application the start date of the trial period:
Time trials overview
I leave aside the question, how the application computes the end of trial period. I assume that it simply takes current date and subtracts the start date. So one can think that it if he/she changes the current date in the computer, the application will think that the trial is not over. Yes, it may work, but please do not try it on unix (unix-like) system, this may lead to unexpected consequences. Moreover Macs use by default NTP (Network Time Protocol) daemon which synchronises the clock (it is convenient for normal user â it always displays the precise time).
Basic analysis
In this section we will analyse in detail the last item from the previous list.
First of all we must say that the information about trial period must be hidden somewhere in the filesystem. I donât know about any system service where you can store some arbitrary information and then pick it up. So the question is: âWhere it is?â. In the following text we will talk about âhidden informationâ (as developers tend to hide this from the user).
There are several types of installations in Mac OS:
The first 2 groups can possibly store some information during the installation process on any place on the disc (it runs with Administrator privileges), but to be honest I donât know any such application. The last group cannot store any information, which needs admin privileges. From these sentences we can deduce that it the application itself, not the installer, who stores the hidden information somewhere.
First run
So we run an application from our user account (without admin privileges). The application stores somewhere information that the trial period has started, so guess where it is?
Macintosh special features
Now it is time to say something more about file system HFS+ used by Mac OS X. For each file, you can store data in the file itself (as expected), then also in so called Resource Fork (see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork) and in extended attributes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_file_attributes). The later two cases are hidden for normal user (et least at its raw form, e.g. if you âcolourâ files in Finder, you use the extended attributes), you need use commandline utilities to view them (e.g. lsmac from osxutils, xattr) and it is a bit uncomfortable to display them.
How to find the hidden information
In this section I will describe basic procedure how to find a place where the application stores the information about the trial period.
In the text above we deduced that the hidden information is in the home directory, where it can be in particular?
Letâs meet our new friends which will help us:
Now I will give some advices, how to find the hidden information ordered from easier to harder.
At first we must clarify, how to check that the trial was reset. Some applications display a big dialog window with information that this as a trial version etc. In the first run and in the consecutive runs it displays only smaller window showing how many days are left. So it is easy to see that the big window appears again. Nevertheless some applications show the same window all the time (so there is no indication that you start the trial period ), so the only clue is number of days left. In such a case you have to wait one or two days, and check the number of days left. In the following text I will only write something like âcheck wether the trial time was resetâ, which may mean to wait one or two days, please keep this in mind (this is the main reason to enable fast user switching â you can continue in work in your regular account).
Step one â preliminary check:
Permissions Reset Mac AppStep two â try simple tricks:
Step three â use Instruments.app
Reset Trial App Mac DownloadStep four â comparing method
Step five â using fs_usage
This is the most painful method, so I use it after failure of previous methods. It is similar to usage of Instruments.app, but uses a different utility.
Reset Apps Data
If you still didnât manage to reset the trial, it may have two reasons:
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