Cracking Tutorial #3 By SiONiDE

Hi fellow Crackers. I write these tutorials in short amounts of time. Therefore I apologise
for any grammatical  errors in this essay. Enjoy the Tut!

Removing NAG Screens Using only A Hex Editor:

Difficulty Level: 	Easy [X] Medium [ ] Hard [ ] Expert [ ]

Toolz Required:
hIEW...............A good Cracking Web Site.
Brain..............Ummm....Head maybe??
Computer...........You're on one now! 

Step 1:

Lets find a target, something easy that has an annoying nag when you run the program.
First lets have a look at it, run the program and note down a few words from the NAG
screen. E.G "You can purchase this software....blah blah blah". Now open target.exe
with the Hex Editor (hIEW) which is the most common for crackers. Load it up and 
press "ENTER" once to put it in HEX mode. Now you press "F7" to do a search, type in
the ASCII value for one of the words, E.G purchase, but you "MUST" put a double zero 
between each number. 

E.G.

230075007200630068006100730065
|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |
P   u   r   c   h   a   s   e


You should then come to something that looks like the below:

0000 0E00 0000 0000 0000 0000 2300 7500   ............P.u.--------> The code you searched for.
7200 6300 6800 6100 7300 6500 0000 0000   r.c.h.a.s.e.....
0000 0000 0100 0000 0100 0250 0700 0700   ................
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000   ................          
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000   ................--------> This part will be replaced 
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000   ................--------> with the rest of the NAG
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000   ................          Message. I've just used full
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000   ................          stops. I'm Lazy. :) 

Step 2:

Once you have found the message. You will need to search for a HEX value of "FFFF82", so
press "F7" and click in the HEX box, type in the value. As said in ACiD_BuRN's NAG tutorial, 
we have no idea why to search for this value, but should always work!!! Once you have found 
it, you will need to replace the 82 with 7E, so FFFF82 becomes FFFF7E. Press F3 to edit,
make sure that read-only is switched off in the properties and enter the new HEX value.
Press F9 to update/save the file. Exit and run the program, walla No More NAG Screen!!!

Step 3:

If you want to make a patch of this routine, d/l a byte matcher and compare the NAG-Free file
with the oiginal. Then make sure you pack your patch before you upload it, this will make it
harder for "fake" crackers to still your work then HEX out your name and fill in theirs!
One more thing..... Before you distibute a patch on the internet, make sure it works, if there
is one thing I hated when I couldn't crack was downloading a crack that doesn't work. Now I save
myself the trouble, and you should too. 

