Checking the serial Number of a CD

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Introduction

This program checks the serial number of a CD-ROM and refuses to work if the installation CD is not in the CD Drive. This program assumes that at the Time of installation the serial number of the installation CD is stored at the registry location HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\CDsoft\Cds. We can achieve this by adding the below code to our installation program.

GetVolumeInformation(drive,
                     vol,
                     sizeof(vol),
                     &sno,
                     &mf,
                     &sf,
                     NULL,NULL);
RegCreateKeyEx (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, "Software\\CDsoft", 0, 
                NULL,REG_OPTION_NON_VOLATILE, KEY_CREATE_SUB_KEY | KEY_ALL_ACCESS, 
                NULL, &childkey, &dispos) ;
RegSetValueEx ( childkey, "Cds", 0, REG_DWORD, ( const BYTE* )(LPDWORD) &sno, size) ;
RegCloseKey ( childkey );

In the OnInitDialog function ,we read the serial number of installation CD from registry by using the code below. And we also start a timer.

    HKEY hkeyresult ;
    DWORD size=sizeof(DWORD) ;
    DWORD type;
    BYTE  sno[100];
    
    RegOpenKey ( HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, ( LPCTSTR ) "Software\\CDsoft", &hkeyresult );
    RegQueryValueEx ( hkeyresult, ( LPCTSTR )"Cds" , 0,&type, sno,&size);
    RegCloseKey ( hkeyresult );
    serialnoCD=*(DWORD *)sno;

    SetTimer(NULL,1000,NULL);

In this program OnTimer calls the function check every second. If the CD is not present in the Drive, this function displays a MessageBox. The function for checking the serial number of a CD-ROM is given below...

void CCDcheckDlg::Check() 
{
    char dbits[100],drive[100];
    int i=0;
    
    DWORD d=GetLogicalDriveStrings(100, dbits);
    strncpy(drive,dbits+i,4);
    
    for (int nDrives = 0; nDrives < 26; nDrives ++)
    {
        if(GetDriveType(drive)==DRIVE_CDROM)
            break;    
        i+=4;
        strncpy(drive,dbits+i,4);
    }

    char vol[40];        
    DWORD mf;            
    DWORD sf,sno;    
    GetVolumeInformation(drive,
                         vol,
                         sizeof(vol),
                         &sno,
                         &mf,
                         &sf,
                         NULL,NULL);

    int ret;
    
    //serialnoCD is the serial number of installation CD..
    if (sno!=serialnoCD){
        ret=MessageBox("To use this software CD Must be in the drive",
                       "Sorry", MB_RETRYCANCEL|MB_ICONERROR|MB_APPLMODAL);    
    }
}

This is only an idea and I don't know much about pirating software. I heard that the serial number is unique for all CD's and it can't be changed but I don't know that is true or false. Anyway I think this method can be useful to reduce or lower piracy. What do you think?

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