UPDATE: See Developer response + fix for Driver Magician issue for a fix to the issue mentioned below.

Driver Magician, the program that was given out yesterday, is a great program no doubt about it. However a very deceitful trick done by the developer has been brought to light by a GOTDer that goes by the name of rezidue (in hindsight, secret2008 also tried to point this out).

Recall Driver Magician being able to create a standalone self executable/install backup of your drivers (“auto-setup”). Well it has been discovered that if you do not have Driver Magician installed, when you try to run this self executable backup you will be prompted with a window that asks you to enter a registration name/code:

If you don’t have the registration name/code only the video and network adapters will be extracted as per what the window says. Now I don’t know about you guys, but when I found out about this and experienced it first hand, I got angry. Not only angry at my self for not catching this, but also really pissed off at the developer for tricking everyone like this. When the developer said “Clone all drivers to an auto-setup package (.EXE), so you can restore drivers without installing Driver Magician.” I know me + thousands of other GOTDers took that as we would be able to use the auto-setup shall we ever lose Driver Magician. And that was not very illogical of us to think that; when a developer says you don’t need XXX program installed to do XXX, one does not expect a loop hole in the middle. Especially the kind of loop hole that the developer knows we cannot pass since GOTD users don’t get registration codes. I thank the developer for giving his product for free but I really, really frown upon this. If the developer wanted to make people enter registration codes before using the auto-setup, he/she never should have said that line I quoted above; or he/she could have simply stated “The auto-setup package (.EXE) feature is not available in this GOTD version – you must purchase Drive Magician to use this feature”. Driver Magician could still have been (in fact still is) a great program without mention of the “auto-setup” EXE; or if the developer stated the feature is not available in the GOTD version, me, and I bet many others, would have appreciated the developer’s transparency and care for us since they took the time to inform us. I don’t know about you, but to me it now seems it was clearly meant to deceive people (i.e. when people try to restore their drivers with the “auto-setup package”, they will find out they need a registration code so they either have to buy DriverMagician or they are SOL). You are welcome to disagree with me. I have a problem with the deceit not with having to enter registration information to use that feature.

That all being said, I have contacted the developer to see if he/she is willing to do something to make up for that. Maybe issue a fix? Or maybe this is all a misunderstanding and having to enter the registration information is a mistake/bug (I hope). I am sure a business does not want such bad publicity. However if the developer decides to not act, I offer a solution:

I will break one of my long standing rules (only temporarily of course) and show everyone how to  find out what registration name and registration code was used to register DriverMagician yesterday. That way everyone will be able to make full use of their auto-setup like the developer claimed/wanted us to believe from the software description. Don’t worry it is actually very simple and easy. However note that I will not be giving out registration codes. I will only show a method on how to find the registration code on your computer. If you did not install Driver Magician yesterday, or in the past, I can’t do anything for you.

The ball is now in the developer’s court. Lets see what happens. Stay tuned.

Note: The issue mentioned above applies to the “auto-setup” EXE not “self-extractor” EXE. “Self-extractor” EXE does not prompt you for registration information when you try to extract from it.