lwbjag: Thanks. Just a quick note that the launcher cannot handle one type of activation (so far). Those that require the manual copying of a file to a specified folder. Also, my father went to the Lord 2 weeks ago.

[snipped]

"tjchan" - I am still using the "launcher" you created. Thanks 8-)
BTW - I hope your Father is feeling better.

I will do so over the weekend. Right now I just don't have time (too much homework).

Thanks.

There was nothing sinister just an accident as the selection run for many pages and I obviously inadvertently took out a few extra lines by mistake. My apologies.

Can you PM me the log details and I will have a closer look. If you (or anyone else) is going to quote other people or post log files - please keep the quoted text to the minimum absolutely necessary

BuBBy, why did you snip out some of the other comments made aside from registry entries? The Activate.exe searched for specific values such as if I had Total Recorder and even Microsoft Groove. Why does it need this? This is beyond the scope of any standard program.

Please be careful on how edits are made and accurately document them (in this case you deleted more than just the registry dump) as this can be a mere oversight or an attempt at censorship (which if I recall there is a thread on accusing moderators of this).

Yes I know all of that. It's no need to break out the tin foil hats. Many programs (and windows itself) read the registry when starting up programs.

Just to connect to the activation servers requires a lot of background work to load the various modules etc, check if you have proxy servers, check the activation server against your list of restricted servers... and so on.

Try to install any significant program and you will find it reads a truckload of registry settings just to startup. Even just to display a message "activation is successful" requires the program to visit the registry to read settings on how the user likes these boxes to be displayed.

Run your program and watch what happens in the registry when you launch firefox (for example). Windows is constantly reading from the registry and even common modules of code where you only use one function might do a heap of other stuff just in case you need some other info (like "where is the temp folder?", "What internet browser is installed?", "Where is the program to launch the browser?", "Does the user have any default settings", "What toolbars should be loaded", "What coordinates on the toolbar should it be placed", "Where are the graphic images for the buttons", "Do they have any restricted sites", "What features should be turned on by default", "Where is the spelling checker".)

So often a simple program to connect to GOTD requires a lot of infrastructure and background code and processing to support this "simple task". It only looks like a lot because you probably never realised what windows had to do in the background to achieve its task.

I'm sure starting and running any other program you will also see a lot of strange activity. Once you understand how it performs its task, you realise it's actually all quite straightforward.

You need not lose any sleep over the activation routines. I've looked at them quite closely and I'm more than happy to run it on my primary pc each day.

Why does the GAotD activate.exe read so many registry values (I don't know if they send the values but I do know that the program reads the values)?

[snipped 52 page dump of registry]