Have you tried to use compressors on skinned apps?

Here the other day I discovered something strange. I thought I would use WinLicense from Oreans (http://www.oreans.com/winlicense.php)to both compress and protect an application made with CodeJocks XTP 13.0.0, statically linked in a MSVC 6.0 SP6 project. At first glimpse everything seemed to work as expected, but it turned out that the compressed application wouldn't skin the menubar and toolbar. This was very visible when I used an iTunes-like skin, where I should have the burshed-metal-lookalike background in both menu and toolbar. The uncompressed application had no problem whatsoever.

So, has anybody had any experience with compressors like WinLicense or AsProtect -and- Codejock Skin Framework?

Thanks for quick response Oleg (as allways!!)

Do you imagine that it could be possible to "align" such products with XTP? I am thinking more in the lines "what would for example WinLicense need to support" in order to be XTP "compliant" skiframework-wise.

Fantastic . I have also informed them about this discussion thread, and based on previous experience I believe they will dive into this. Thanks again!!

Peter,

Oreans did quite some analysis to get this working. At the time being the XBundler-feature doesn't work, but you can protect your application. The changes are;

1. Enable the 'SecureEngine Config' pane via a setting in the WinLicense.ini. Contact them to get details, I am not sure I can reveal it publicly.
2. Set the CustomImportTable: [kernel32.dll,lstrcpy][user32.dll,MessageBoxExA]
3. Set the ImplicitRedirection
4. Set the RefixInitialThunk
5. Go to the “Protection Options Panel” and check the option “Advanced API-Wrapper -> Disabled”
6. Go to the “Advanced Options Panel” and check the option “Hide PE Scanners -> Type 4”

Hope this helps!