Wednesday, November 07, 2007

How to Break Borland C/C++ 4.52

Now, you're probably wondering why I'm posting about a C++ compiler that was pretty cool 12 years ago, but is now painfully obsolete. Well, believe it or not, some companies make money on software that depends upon this compiler.

Here's the deal. Normal, sane people don't rename their printers to something incredibly verbose. But if you were normal and sane you wouldn't be using Borland C/C++ v4.52. Under Windows XP, click Start | Printers and Faxes and you'll see a list of the printers installed on your machine. Pick one you like, click on its properties, and rename the printer to something like this: "HP LaserJet 4 (but I've added a very verbose description of many long and boring details to blow out memory in a zApp buffer)" Now you're all set.

Suppose you make this oddly-named printer your default printer. Then launch the Borland 4.52 IDE. You should see the Borland copyright splash screen overshadowed by a dialog box that says this:

Fatal error in IDECRTL at 0001:4758 (addr = 0x143f4758)
Borland C++ will terminate
Save editors before exit?

It doesn't matter what you do, Borland will immediately exit. And all you'll have is the unenlightening error message above to guide you. That and a bunch of 8-year-old Usenet posts that will misdirect you to version mismatched DLLs, to reinstall. Reinstalling won't help. Rebooting won't help. You'll have to change the printer name and/or the default printer to something less verbose.

Hopefully, if you see the error message above, the Google godz will wisely steer you to this note. Good luck my friend.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nahhh, I Cant Believe it. But its true! Damm... I thought it was a Vista problem... Thank you!

Anonymous said...

thank you so much..it works:)

Anonymous said...

Thanks a lot.
Very usefull. You have just bring to me the solution that i look for.

Anonymous said...

thanks man it work in windows 7