Here's a selection of emails I get each week, so before you e-mail me, all I ask is that you check here to see if I've already answered your question/problem or that it can be found via a search engine.

"Subject: Is it crackable?"

"Please forgive me but I really need your help. There's a program called HotelQ. It costs about $500 to buy. Do you think you know anyone who can crack it. I've found a copy a copy at http://users.skynet.be/*******/hotelq.zip.

I've been looking for the serial number for this program for nearly 18 months without success. I will pay for your time if necessary.

Please please please help"

1. I get 100's of these emails each week asking if I would help to crack a particular program. The fact that it costs $500 or more, makes no difference to me what-so-ever.  The day I start accepting your money for your crack requests will be the day I quit the Reversing scene altogether, so if you can't find a ready-made crack or serial and you still want to use this program then BUY IT, since you obviously find it very useful!.
 

"Subject: help ME"

hello !!
SandMan !!

 I can't understand ultraedit v6.0c protectoin.
 it's very hard( mine think)  please tell me that tut..( keygen or patch)

 your tut is Good..

2. A short email that tells me very little about what the writer wants from me. If it's to tell him/her where to find a keygen or patch for Ultra Edit v6 then I'm the wrong person to ask.. I don't know or care, where the patches/keygens are found on the net so my best advise is to try : ASTALAVISTA.BOX.SK or one of the Newsgroups instead.

"Subject: Help me using WINICE v3.23 for windows"

 have a problem with WINICE 3.2 for Win95.
How to debug an application if I haven't no programs to transform the EXE file in SYMBOL file?
 

3. This is a very common email and one that can be easily answered if you visit and download the documents found here:

http://www.proweb.co.uk/~greenway/SoftPage.html
or here,
http://www.cyberspy.com/thesandman/SoftPage.html

Once you've done this then read the F.A.Q on cracking by +WAJ
http://www.idca.com/~thesandman/faq.rtf
 

Subject "Dead Listing..."

I read with great interest your article "Dead Listings", However , sad
to say that part 7 and 8 ( I think these will be the most important
parts) have not been reveal for months, may I ask you when you can
"finish " it ?. I long for it very much.
thank you

4. The Essay on Dead Listing was stopped because I quickly found that, in order to do this subject any justice, it would have to encompass a number of other cracking related subjects besides the Dead Listing one, that, in turn would require a huge amount of my spare time to properly explain. If anyone wishes to finish this essay off then by all means send me your tutorial and I will add this to the one I started. Full credit will be given to your work.
 

"Subject:  None used"

"Hey,
  Well I visit your page alot, ALOT, read all of your excellent tutorials, I use your forums alot, both to ask and to answer, but I must say that I'm dissapointed from your latest projects (last 3).

  Everytime a project like this pops up I already know that I'll have to put a real name/password, that's fine, worked for me for the first 2 projects and helped me alot to practice (project 2 if I recall right helped me finding a way to crack this in 2 sec!) so as I say they were great, but I, as a newbies (3 months tops in the scene) would like to see more usefull practices, like how to overcome a CRC check, CD Check etc.. Ofcourse, CD-CHECK would mostly come in a game so there I thought, why not challenge your best "students" in coming up with a challenge (like the crackme's but not the same USERNAME/PASSWORD idea), I'm sure that alot of them would like to see their names on a project and they would LOVE to write their own programs that check for CDFS/CRC changes..."
 

5.  Some good points mentioned but on others, they are out of the scope  and range for many newbies..  The project forum I run is for those 'newbies' who have some idea on how to use Softice & W32Dasm but little or no experience on reversing software..  The target's I use in the project forum are deliberately chosen based on what we can learn from them.. Simply saying you can 'crack' this program is not enough, you also have to understand it first before you can say you've truly 'cracked' it.  My web site and Project forums are for 'newbies' in the true sense of the word, that's what I do and all that I do.  For more 'advanced' learning we have other web pages and forums that cater for this area and above  far better than I.  Finally, on each of my projects I have had new students joining in for the first time, therefore they would not have learned from the previous projects so for them at least, this is their first taste of 'learning to crack'..

Subject:  No subject used.

My name is ***** *******, and I am the webmaster of *********.com. I was visiting your site and noticed that there you were running a site that offers items that are similiar to what I offer. I get between 750-800 hits per day, and I see that you are somewhere in the area of that.It seems that it could be beneficial for both of us to trade button links. If you are interested please let me know. Thanks for you time.
 

6. This is also another common email I receive..  My links page is normally one of the last priorities I tend to and gets updated occasionally. However, any web site I come across that IMHO, goes above and beyond the basic R.C.E. web pages then I will try and include it in my links page as-soon-as-possible.  In all honesty, I'm not interested in gaining extra 'hits' via the exchanging of links, if your on my links page then it's because YOU deserve to be there and for no other reason.

Subject: VB 4.

Hi

How can I crack that damn VB 4.0 Program (attached). I have no idea.
I tried your VB 4.0 trick but it doesn't work. Please help!

Ciao
 

7.  My mailbox gets dozens of attached files for me to 'look' at every week and it also DELETES dozens of attached files each week. PLEASE, no more!.. If you want to send me something then ask me first, but if it's to 'look' at a program so that I can help you crack it or offer help on it then FORGET IT!.  I don't have the time to spare on this pursuit nor do I do crack on request.

Subject: "Softice Serial #"

Hya,

OK this may well sound stupid but well I am a newbie...
When downlaoding softice from your page And entering the setup it asked for a serialcode...how do I obtain the
serial code...
where can I get this code....
thanks in advance

8. If there is a working link on my web page that leads to a copy of Softice then, the chances are, I have no idea where you can find a working serial for it.  You can try looking in the zip file for files ending with .DIZ, .NFO and opening them up in your NotePad.. I hear that serials can sometimes be found in these files.

Subject:  "File changed/Missing"

Yo sandman

I was trying to follow your essay No ##  and found that the code is different in my version than what is shown in your tutorial..

What gives?
 

9. This is a very common problem..  The chances are, you have a later version of the program than what I originally used for the tutorial.  I am slowly retaining all the programs I use in my tuts/essays so that this problem does not occur, however, I am limited by my isp's to how much space I have for this purpose.  My best advice in this case is to use my original essay as a 'guide' to finding your way around this program. Chances are, the code offset values will be different but, by and large, most of the original code will still be intact, unless of course, the whole program has been completly updated, in which case throw away my tutorial and have a go cracking this program on your own.  If this is too difficult and you still want to use the original version then why not try using http://www.filez.com and search on the filename I used in my original tutorial.

Subject: "Error in ur tut"

"Greetz,

While following your tut ## I found an error that said I had to type: d edi but I think you really meant it to say d edx which u find displays the correct serialz."
 

10. Opps.. A lot of my essays were written on the 'fly' and with lots of interruptions from my family who were getting concerned because they hadn't seen me for most of the day *grin*. Typing/Grammer errors will unfortunately sneak into my essays when I'm not looking and yes, so will mistakes of the nature you have just mentioned. Any mistakes you find then by all means let me know, I will try and correct them as-and-when you find them.