windows 3.1 fun

[pcmattman]

So... ReadProcessMemory and WriteProcessMemory are bug in the OS?

Not quite. They are an interface to do a similar thing, with security. A bug in the OS proper would be the ability to write into another process' memory using any old pointer, without requiring an API call.

[Owen]

If your an administrator, you're free to kill smss [blue screen*], csrss [box reboots] or lsass [30 second reboot timer] if you want.

Even more fun, of course, is to do so over a network using pskill.

[*I remember these being the errors it threw up. I may have them mixed up, and I'm not sure about smss blue screening]

[jal]

Actually, 3.1 ran in 16-bit protected mode most of the time. There hasn't been a real mode Windows since 2.0-ish. Just about everyone gets these details wrong

Including yourself. What's that law called again ("every correction includes at least one error") :). It is true that Win 3.1 didn't have realmode, but Windows 3.0 did.

Early versions of Microsoft Windows ran in real mode, until Windows 386, which ran in protected mode, and the more fully realized Windows 3.0, which could run in either real or protected mode. Windows 3.0 could actually run in two "flavours" of protected mode: "standard mode", which ran using protected mode, and "386-enhanced mode", which is a virtualized version of standard mode and thus would not run on a 286. Windows 3.1 removed support for real mode, and it was the first mainstream operating environment which required at least an 80286 processor.

JAL

[VolTeK]

owen: i used gmer to end csrss in a virtual machine and it i think was the one that blue screened or froze the system but what do you mean by box reboot? heck i even ended winlogon just to see everything go classic looking and it would sometimes blue screen or wait a while then blue screen.

[Colonel Kernel]

Actually, 3.1 ran in 16-bit protected mode most of the time. There hasn't been a real mode Windows since 2.0-ish. Just about everyone gets these details wrong

Including yourself. What's that law called again ("every correction includes at least one error") . It is true that Win 3.1 didn't have realmode, but Windows 3.0 did.

The "-ish" was meant to cover a multitude of sins.

[imate900]

You can trash Windows 3.1 by removing progman.exe

I trashed ReactOS by removing C:\freeldr.sys

[jal]

You can trash Windows 3.1 by removing progman.exe :)
I trashed ReactOS by removing C:\freeldr.sys :)

And this is useful information because? Removing a critical file from any operating system prevents its operation, I would think.


JAL

[Troy Martin]

progman.exe isn't really that critical. You can change the SHELL= line in either win.ini or system.ini to something like sol.exe (now wouldn't that be a counterproductive shell...) or winfile.exe.

freeldr.sys, however, is more important. I suppose one could reverse engineer NTLDR or some other bootloader to play nice with ReactOS and get it up and running though!