Comment by gavaw
3 years ago
This article is about the AARD code, which was present in a beta release of Windows but was never shipped.
3 years ago
This article is about the AARD code, which was present in a beta release of Windows but was never shipped.
Actually it was shipped. “Microsoft disabled the AARD code for the final release of Windows 3.1, but did not remove it, so that it could have become reactivated later by the change of a single byte in an installed system.” [1]
[1] Schulman, Andrew; Brown, Ralf D.; Maxey, David; Michels, Raymond J.; Kyle, Jim (1994) [November 1993]. Undocumented DOS: A programmer's guide to reserved MS-DOS functions and data structures - expanded to include MS-DOS 6, Novell DOS and Windows 3.1 (2 ed.). Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-63287-X.
Is it shipped if it cannot execute under any conditions? Philosophical question I'm afraid.
The code? Yes
The feature? No
The company that makes GTA was sued for content that was not accessible in the game.
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> could have become reactivated later by the change of a single byte in an installed system.
Is that not a condition under which it could be executed?
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As documented in the excellent book "Undocumented DOS", whose red cover I can still picture. (Noted in the article, but it was a good book that I still recall fondly.)
I can touch my copy without moving from the chair that I am sitting in. (-:
Is it now your monitor's support?
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Thanks for the recommendation! Just bought a copy off eBay for $4 for my collection.
However it was present in the release shipped to reviewers, who wrote their reviews which including saying how windows worked better on ms-dos
IIRC, the author of "Undocumented DOS" discovered and disclosed this feature during the beta, before release.
It seems at least plausible, if not probable, that Microsoft disabled the xor encrypted bogus error message generating code in the release version as a result of this disclosure.