How does Cracklock work ?
Cracklock controls a list of programs you set up. When a program from this list needs time or date, Cracklock operates, bluffing the calling program and returning the pre-determined date or time you have set. So, the program "thinks" to be at the date/time it accepts for running.
For the end user : bypass the 30th day virus
With this system, you can bypass many problems encountered with softwares distributed on the Net, affected by the 30th day virus, which fail running after a more or less long duration of normal use.
For the developer : use a safe method for Y2K testing
With the help of Cracklock, the program developer can readily test or check the "Year 2000 compatibility" (Y2K) of the softwares he develops.
Actually to do this, the developer modifies the global system date, simulating the night of december 31th, 1999 through january 1st, 2000. This affects all the system, and a number of side effects can arise. Having no time to develop this exhaustively, I will demonstrate it with two examples :
Windows is not a mono-process operating system : whatever the program you are checking for the Y2K compatibility, you are allowed to use simultaneously your computer to do normal operations with all the other softwares (being stated you are legal licensee). As you have changed the global system date/time, the date stamping of the files produced by these softwares are affected. After that, it wont be easy to analyze the content of your hard disk, or to use cleaning functions of disk managers as Norton, for example, and so on.
Moreover, you can have installed one of the famous "30th day virused" programs, these programs that include the 30th day virus, Paint Shop Pro for example, and want to run it. If you use it together with the program under the Y2K testing, obviously you will forget to set the date/time back, and you will mislead PSP, letting it "thinking" the 30 days period has expired. If PSP is well developed -and sure, it is- it will never function at all, even if the installation has just been made.