SoftSentry v2.0

Firs of all thanks for your promopt response.

You're welcome! In past times I've been given a lot from the community, and I reply (and I'll do it) whenever I can. No matter what people think about it, this is my own way of trying to pay my debt.

What you are sugguesting is cracking the exedss.dll?

Yes, sure. Usually the weakness of such old protections (external functions in a DLL) dwells in the external calls performed by the protected program; but in case odf SoftSENTRY, the protection scheme is very simple and very easy to crack, and the DLL is very small.

Because I can't find the jumps to softsentry() within the compiled VB code.

This because the main program uses Run-Time Dynamic Linking, i.e. LoadLibrary and GetProcAddress. In VB, this method is implemented inside DllFunctionCall, exported by the VB runtime library. If you examine the strings contained in the main program (by means any hex editor, for example), you'll find "exesdss.dll" and , after some bytes, SoftSentry, GetString, and so on;a SmartCheck session will easily show where and when the calls come.

Have fun!