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Me, myself & IT

Gimmick of the Day (or Week, Month, Year, …)

Click the appropriate button to select and display your gimmick, or the empty button to reset your selection and hide the gimmick.

Directory Identifiers MSDM Product Key Reader  

Dirids

Purpose

The setup scripts DIRID.INF and LDID.INF create the file DIRID.INI or LDID.INI respectively on the user’s desktop with all known Dirids and the pathnames they resolve to, then opens it in Windows’® text editor NotePad.exe.

Operation

Right-click the downloaded setup script DIRID.INF or LDID.INF respectively to display its context menu and click Install to run it.

MSDM Product Key Reader

Purpose

The Windows® application MSDM Product Key Reader.exe displays the device-specific individual product key embedded by (big) OEMs in the MSDM table of the ACPI BIOS.
This product key is used for automatic selection of the product edition and the activation of Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 during their installation, and can since version 1511 alias Threshold 2 be used for (manual) product activation of Windows 10 too.

Background Information

The MSDM table of the ACPI BIOS is specified in a white paper available from Microsoft Software Licensing Tables (SLIC and MSDM) on MSDN.

Implementation and Build Details

MSDM Product Key Reader.exe is a pure Win32 application, written in ANSI C, built with the Platform SDK for Windows Server 2003 R2 Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler 2010 SP1 from update 2519277, but without the MSVCRT libraries, for use on Windows Server 2003 and newer versions of Windows NT as well as Windows PE 2.0 and newer versions.

Source and Build Instructions

Optionally perform the following 2 simple steps to build MSDM Product Key Reader.exe from the source.

Note: MSDM Product Key Reader.exe is a pure Win32 application and builds without the MSVCRT libraries.

  1. Create the text file GIMMICK.C with the following content: 

    // Copyright © 2012-2021, Stefan Kanthak <‍stefan‍.‍kanthak‍@‍nexgo‍.‍de‍>

#define STRICT
#undef UNICODE
#define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN

#include <windows.h>

typedef	struct	_msdm		// 'Microsoft Data Management' table
{
	DWORD	Signature;	// "MSDM" = 0x4D44534D = 'MDSM'
	DWORD	Length;		// size of entire MSDM table: 0x00000055
	BYTE	Revision;
	BYTE	Checksum;	// checksum of entire MSDM table
	CHAR	OEMId[6];	// OEM identification
	CHAR	OEMTableId[8];
	DWORD	OEMRevision;
	CHAR	CreatorId[4];	// creator identification
	DWORD	CreatorRevision;

	DWORD	Version;	// 0x00000001
	DWORD	Reserved;	// 0x00000000
	DWORD	DataType;	// 0x00000001
	DWORD	DataReserved;	// 0x00000000
	DWORD	DataLength;	// 0x0000001D
	CHAR	Data[29];	// product key: "23467-89BCD-FGHJK-MNPQR-TVWXY"
} MSDM;

__declspec(noreturn)
__declspec(safebuffers)
VOID	WINAPI	WinMainCRTStartup(VOID)
{
	MSDM	msdm;
	BYTE	bCheckSum;
	DWORD	dwCheckSum;

	// see <https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724379.aspx>

	if (GetSystemFirmwareTable('ACPI', 'MDSM', NULL, sizeof(msdm)) == 0)
		MessageBoxExA(HWND_DESKTOP,
		              "No \'MSDM\' table found!",
		              "\'MSDM\' Product Key Reader",
		              MB_OK | MB_ICONQUESTION,
		              MAKELANGID(LANG_ENGLISH, SUBLANG_NEUTRAL));
	else
		if (GetSystemFirmwareTable('ACPI', 'MDSM', &msdm, sizeof(msdm)) > sizeof(msdm))
			MessageBoxExA(HWND_DESKTOP,
			              "Error reading \'MSDM\' table!",
			              "\'MSDM\' Product Key Reader",
			              MB_OK | MB_ICONERROR,
			              MAKELANGID(LANG_ENGLISH, SUBLANG_NEUTRAL));
		else
		{
			for (bCheckSum = 0, dwCheckSum = msdm.Length;
			     dwCheckSum > 0L;
			     bCheckSum += ((BYTE *) &msdm)[--dwCheckSum])
				continue;

			if ((bCheckSum != 0)
			 || (msdm.Version != 1L)
			 || (msdm.Reserved != 0L)
			 || (msdm.DataType != 1L)
			 || (msdm.DataReserved != 0L)
			 || (msdm.DataLength != sizeof(msdm.Data)))
				MessageBoxExA(HWND_DESKTOP,
				              "Invalid or unknown \'MSDM\' table found!",
				              "\'MSDM\' Product Key Reader",
				              MB_OK | MB_ICONWARNING,
				              MAKELANGID(LANG_ENGLISH, SUBLANG_NEUTRAL));
			else
			{
				msdm.Data[sizeof(msdm.Data)] = '\0';

				MessageBoxExA(HWND_DESKTOP,
				              msdm.Data,
				              "\'MSDM\' Product Key Reader",
				              MB_OK | MB_ICONINFORMATION,
				              MAKELANGID(LANG_ENGLISH, SUBLANG_NEUTRAL));
			}
		}

	ExitProcess(GetLastError());
}

  2. Run the following three command lines to compile the source file GIMMICK.C created in step 1., link the compiled object file GIMMICK.OBJ and cleanup afterwards: 

    CL.EXE /c /GA /GF /GS /O1 /Os /TcGIMMICK.C /W4 /Zl
LINK.EXE /LINK /DYNAMICBASE /ENTRY:WinMainCRTStartup /FIXED:NO /NODEFAULTLIB /NXCOMPAT /OSVERSION:5.2 /OUT:"MSDM Product Key Reader.exe" /RELEASE /SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS,5.2 /SWAPRUN:CD,NET GIMMICK.OBJ KERNEL32.LIB USER32.LIB
ERASE GIMMICK.OBJ
    For details and reference see the MSDN articles Compiler Options and Linker Options.

    Note: if necessary, see the MSDN article Use the Microsoft C++ toolset from the command line for an introduction.

    Note: the command lines can be copied and pasted as block into a Command Processor window! 

    Microsoft (R) C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 16.00.40219.01 for 80x86
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

GIMMICK.C

Microsoft (R) Incremental Linker Version 10.00.40219.386
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

...

Purpose

Demonstrate ...

Installation

Right-click the downloaded registry script CONTEXT.REG to display its context menu and click Merge to import it into the registry of your user account.

Operation

Right-click ...

Contact

If you miss anything here, have additions, comments, corrections, criticism or questions, want to give feedback, hints or tipps, report broken links, bugs, deficiencies, errors, inaccuracies, misrepresentations, omissions, shortcomings, vulnerabilities or weaknesses, …: don’t hesitate to contact me and feel free to ask, comment, criticise, flame, notify or report!

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