Proof that Windows is bloatware

[luis]

This!

The new version of +1 ?

[Ramihyn_]

Maybe Microsoft is trickier then we thought and the 30 mb download is part of the compatibility test. Because if you think 30 mb is a waste and too much, then you DEFINATELY dont want to upgrade to vista or Win7

It was compatiblity testing you and would afterwards proceed with your system.

[the.weavster]

Then they started giving it away to bring over the stragglers, and now many MANY developers use .net. Even in the Linux camp they use it (heck, Ubuntu has Mono integrated in it for many of it's applications!)

Isn't Mono deprecated now though? I thought I read Novell had been bought out and the company that took them over had laid off developers and pulled the plug on any further Mono development.

[netmaestro]

The new version of +1 ?

Try to keep up, it.s the .net version!

[MachineCode]

Maybe Microsoft is trickier then we thought and the 30 mb download is part of the compatibility test. Because if you think 30 mb is a waste and too much, then you DEFINATELY dont want to upgrade to vista or Win7

Best reply so far!

[Danilo]

About the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor:
This tool does not check your hardware configuration only, as you may think.
It also checks drivers and compatibility issues for some software you may have
installed. 8MB is not much for such a tool imho.
That you have to install the .NET Framework 2 just proves that Microsoft is using
.NET for coding their tools and applications.

@Foz:
Interesting speculation. I asked myself: will MS compile/port the old WinAPI to ARM?
For a company this means spending money (for the developers), so i am not sure
there will be WinAPI on ARM anymore. I have not read anything about this yet on
MSDN.

@Ramihyn_:
Its OK to just use the designer for doing basic stuff, but for advanced stuff you have
to write XAML and XAML templates by hand. For example, if you are interested in
developing your own WPF controls or modify the look/skin, you should know it.
I read a big book about WPF and XAML (german: "WPF - das umfassende Handbuch", Galileo Computing, 1200 pages)
to learn it, and it is easy to write and modify XAML by hand once you know it.
I licensed ActiPro WPF Studio for a quick start, and i am interested in developing
my own WPF controls in the future.

For obfuscation and protection i use EZIRIZ .NET Reactor, a tool that includes
license management too, and all tools from redgate, which includes
SmartAssembly for protecting and automated error reporting from users and
ANTS Performance Profiler, ANTS Memory Profiler, Exception Hunter, .NET Reflector Pro.

Can you show me how to precompile .NET stuff, Ramihyn_? Already tried it myself and it did not work
with .EXE's. Not a very big problem, i can just write a startup .exe (also to show a splash screen) and
put the main stuff in a .dll that i can install and compile with NGEN into the GAC (Global Assembly Cache)
at installation time.
Just would be nice to know another trick to precompile full .EXE's. I couldn't get this to work here with .EXE's,
just with .DLL's. Thanks in advance!

[Foz]

No, the whole point of .net was to remove direct access to the API. Indeed using the API is frowned upon in .net.

Linux developers have taken advantage of that with interfacing with Unix api's. Now Microsoft is taking advantage of this with their new API WinRT which is which will work on Intel and ARM.

[Ramihyn_]

Just would be nice to know another trick to precompile full .EXE's. I couldn't get this to work here with .EXE's,
just with .DLL's. Thanks in advance!

Codewall Assembly Encryption or Spoon studio might be want you want.

[Foz]

At work, we use Remotesoft's Protector - a .net exe *cannot* be reverse engineered. At all.

Forget obfuscation - this just stops decompilers dead.

[Tenaja]

... a .net exe *cannot* be reverse engineered. At all.

Sounds like marketing hype to me. EXE's were reverse engineered all day long before .net and CIL came out. Heck, some of the guys even had some informal contests to reverse engineer code on this forum! Reversing a .net exe just requires a different tool (or set of tools) from the built-in microsoft tools.

[Foz]

Go ahead and decrypt AES-256 encrypted executable code.

Please, if you can, then I can push the case at work with PureBasic

(believe me - I've tried - really really tried)

[luis]

I don't really like the idea of using C# to write a program I would probably give away as freeware and to have to buy something costing hundreds of dollars (if not more) to protect my code to be converted back to source in 60 seconds.
At least the option to generate x86/x64 code should have been native with the MS compilers from the start, and if they didn't like that idea (going against some of the reasons for .net) something else to avoid this problem.
The need of all these obfuscators and alike really left me stunned from day 1, even if I can appreciate the reasons for the tons of metadata they stuffed in the exe.

[Ramihyn_]

Go ahead and decrypt AES-256 encrypted executable code.

No X86/x64 cpu can run encrypted code. So there will be a loader which decrypts the code before execution. Software has done that for decades and it is just one method to make reverse engineering more difficult.

If the company wants to claim that it is "impossible", they shouldnt have a problem assigning a 50.000 € price to reverse engineer a simple app. Once they do that, i'll happily have a look.

Actually i just checked the product and the company itself states

Or, more accurately, it is as difficult as converting native executables back to C/C++ code.

[Tenaja]

Go ahead and decrypt AES-256 encrypted executable code.

IF all the program does is encrypt the code, then it likely does less than an obfuscator. In order to run, IF it's just encrypted CIL code that needs decrypting to run, then the decryption algorithm is built in, and that encryption is pointless to anyone with a machine-code disassembler and five minutes. Heck, I once had to reverse engineer a "32-bit only" hardware driver that had encryption built in, and it was as easy as opening a hex editor that would show asm op-codes. Now I have a driver that works with "any cpu"...but the point is that code encryption is a very tiny hurdle to jump over in terms of code security. In this day and age, you can do little more than slow the determined. Sometimes you can spend hours, days, or big bucks to make the inevitable only delayed by a few seconds.

[Danilo]

Umm, i made a silly mistake last time. NGen works with my exe now, so it is precompiled
and does not need JIT compilation each time. Thanks for the links anyway, Ramihyn_.

@luis:
You don't need "something costing hundreds of dollars (if not more)". Most of this tools
include protection as a part, but provide much more (which you may not need).
EZIRIZ .Net Reactor is not free, but US$ 179 (~ €140) should be in the price range for
hobby developers or 1 man companies that care about protecting their apps.
It is a one time investment, you can protect everything you write in the future with it.

The high prices for most of this tools are b2b prices (business-to-business), because this tools
are not made for end users.
If you really need/want one of this tools, just write an eMail to sales department.
I did so and explained that i don't run a business yet. I just asked if they have
special prices for non-business developers or startups. My experience with this is
positive, 50% off are quite common. Still much money, but for a 1-man-thing or startup
it can make a big difference to pay $1600 or $800 only for a package with several tools.
Every business started small and most of this guys still remember it and are helpful
if you ask nicely and explain your situation.