Hi Damien,

Sorry, I didn't explain properly......it is more of a little utility(pilot's
logbook) that I want to protect from unauthorised copying.

The idea would be that when someone tries to run a new copy, it will spit
out a code unique to that guys' computer. He must then phone me with that
code, which I will then put through some sort of routine to generate a
key(the program on his machine does the same routine) and if it matches, the
program works.

The idea of the network card is good, except that this is a simple desktop
utility and not all computers will have a card......but it is on the right
track.

Ok. Thanks guys.....looking forward to more ideas.

Kenny
"Damien" wrote in message
...
Kenny,

why not just use Access User-level security? If set up
properly, no-one will be able to open the database without
a password, plus you can set up different groups and
control which areas of the database they have access to.


Damien

-----Original Message-----
Kenny wrote:
Hi guys,

I have an Access database that I am running and I want
to prevent
people from using the database without my permission.
How could I
protect it?

My one thought is to uniquely identify the machine that
it is running
on and then use that identifier in conjuntion with the
date/time to
produce a key that I will issue to the user. In order
to do this I
need my code to lookup or identify some unique number
on the
computer.....I dunno.......maybe the CPU production
serial number(if
there is such a thing) or somethng similar.

Any ideas?

The network card has a unique ID.




.