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Modifying the way Programs Work

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Apple
, November 1st, 2012 at 10:08 AM (3490 Views)
How do I go about doing this? Since I obviously can't run SAI on my school without administrator permissions, I looked a bit more and found apparently the cause of the issue is that SAI runs a scan at start up to determine if existing versions have been installed.

Preventing this scan will cause it to exit (I think due to failed checksum), so I was wondering about two alternatives:
1. redirect the scan to another one of my drives, rather than the computer's internal drive, or
2. modify the scan and force it to return a 'neutral' checksum that says everything is all right, no previous versions were installed, etc.

Does anyone know of any other methods I can allow it to run without having to do the scan? Alternatively, how do I go about changing the way in which SAI's automatic scan function works?

Updated November 1st, 2012 at 02:31 PM by Apple

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  1. Mike1984's Avatar
    Well, is there really not a crack for SAI available somewhere that will bypass this?
  2. Kotonoha's Avatar
    I have no idea what your question is.
  3. Apple's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kotonoha
    I have no idea what your question is.
    I want to modify SAI such that it doesn't actually have to scan the computer whenever it starts. So I'm looking for a way to do this.
  4. Bittersweet's Avatar
    Are you trying to run it on a school PC in a library or something? Or is it a laptop the school gave you to borrow?
  5. Dark Pulse's Avatar
    No way you can do it short of reverse-engineering, disassembling, and recoding the program, which is more trouble than it's worth.

    Find a different program; it's less effort. :x
  6. Mike1984's Avatar
    Is there really not an existing crack for SAI which will bypass this? I would be amazed to find that there wasn't.
  7. Kotonoha's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Dark Pulse
    No way you can do it short of reverse-engineering, disassembling, and recoding the program, which is more trouble than it's worth.

    Find a different program; it's less effort. :x
    "Find a different program" says a man who clearly knows nothing about digital art software
  8. RR121's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kotonoha
    "Find a different program" says a man who clearly knows nothing about digital art software
    No. Really, he's not wrong.

    You'll have a better time making a new digital art program from SCRATCH than you will reverse-engineering a program. From experience.
  9. Seika's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by RR121
    No. Really, he's not wrong.

    You'll have a better time making a new digital art program from SCRATCH than you will reverse-engineering a program. From experience.
    Missing Koto's point. And, believe me, she has one.
  10. Apple's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Dark Pulse
    No way you can do it short of reverse-engineering, disassembling, and recoding the program, which is more trouble than it's worth.

    Find a different program; it's less effort. :x
    Quote Originally Posted by RR121
    No. Really, he's not wrong.

    You'll have a better time making a new digital art program from SCRATCH than you will reverse-engineering a program. From experience.
    But it's just modifying one component, and apparently people have done it before- but they did the aforementioned 'prevent scan from executing' method. So it exited right after. I want to modify the scan, or identify the checksum so I can fake a negative scan result.

    Also, there is no program like SAI out there. The degree of line control is unparalleled. Photoshop, Gimp and Corel have nowhere near that degree of line detail. It has to be SAI.
  11. RR121's Avatar
    Don't get me wrong, I understand your point -- I've worked with some artists. I'm just telling you that its flat out not gonna happen. You're not gonna get the source code, and without that, *any* change to the program, barring simple string/image manipulation, requires a mastery of assembly.

    What was probably done was modifying some basic section of the assembly code, but since there's a checksum involved, its gonna be hell. You might try modifying the scan to point at some other folder and having the code itself return the negative, but there's a lot of ifs involved. The point is, that when programmers "lose" the original source code, which is effectively the situation you're in, we're taught that its a lot easier to start over and make the program again than to even try to decompile that stuff.
  12. RR121's Avatar
    If you're absolutely insistent upon this course of action, your easiest task is to break into the admin account, which may or may not be a thing you wish to erm...do.
  13. Apple's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by RR121
    If you're absolutely insistent upon this course of action, your easiest task is to break into the admin account, which may or may not be a thing you wish to erm...do.
    I don't mind. How do I go about it? I have access to the computer's CMD (haven't tried task manager though) and I heard their admin password is stored on an external server, but I think you can log in to it with one of the normal school computers.
  14. Bittersweet's Avatar
    Ok, so back to my question...
  15. Enhance's Avatar
    Basically, if you want to modify the actual way program works, DP is right - pick your poison:
    http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/X86_Dis..._Disassemblers
    Then learn the language and pore in millions of characters of autogenerated low-level code. But looking at what you posted by now I think you'd be far from it.

    If you have problems with installation, you might try to just copy the program (and maybe manually fix registry).

    If you have problems with startup of the program, try installing it on your own PC with admin rights, then disable that check somewhere in options (if it's possible?) and copy to the new place.

    There's also so-called "sandbox", but I've never worked with one and I'm not sure how it would help your case.
  16. Mcjon01's Avatar
    Buy a laptop and use it instead of your school computers?
  17. Bittersweet's Avatar
    Well he won't give any information besides the paltry bit so far. Depending on the circumstances, there may be an entirely better way of going about this. But... oh well I guess.
  18. Apple's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Bittersweet
    Are you trying to run it on a school PC in a library or something?
    Yes, computer lab.

    I'm not bringing my laptop because it risks getting stolen and it's terrible lugging it up and down along with the thick as hell lecture notes. oAo
  19. Bittersweet's Avatar
    Would you use Sai for an art class or strictly personal free time?
  20. Mcjon01's Avatar
    Buy yourself a netbook, then. Super-cheap, light, portable. Don't have to bring your real laptop everywhere, but don't have to deal with school computers where you don't have full control, either. And they even come with all the video-out bells and whistles these days if you need more screen real estate for arting.
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