Bo selecta !

so.... in the great move from Windows to linux i hit one minor snag.
there is no open source route planner / travel manager. and i dont like the online ones.

so i decided to try wine. A win32 API compatability layer for UNIX.
it runs counter strike, Internet explorer, MS Office, so why not "TNT TravelManager GB"

everything works except for one tiny almost insignificant problem.

the Assembly Instruction 'INT15' is not supported by Wine.
its an annoying timer call that controlls how long the splash screen stays on screen.
because it is not supported, the splash screen stays up permenantly. and controll never goes to the main application window.
this INT15 only exists twice in the whole binary, one to Start the timer, and once to stop the timer.

before i give up and pay the whopping £3 for wineX (which might not work either)
i want to try hacking the program a little.

since i dont know enough about wine or the win32 api to implement this API Call, i was thinking of removing it from the Win32 exe.

Replaceing this INT15 instruction with an ADD 0, or a JUMP to nex instruction Instruction.

any idea's what will happen ?

im hopeing that without a call to the timer, the splash screen will pop uo, then instantly close.

also.... which to you think would be easyer.... doing it with a Hexeditor, or reverse engineering to windows Assembly, then re-asembling ?

I'm not sure how much I can go into here...basically you are asking:

How do I reverse engineer Win32 applications

I appreciate here it is for a legitimate use - what you'll have to do is use a Win32 Disassembler (Windasm (aka Wdasm) is the newbie tool; IDAPro for ...pros...) - find the call and remove it by NOPing it out. (So long as that call doesn't contain any useful code such as the declaration of variables etc - I've seen it happen)

There's no "reassembling" as such - the disassembler will show you the ASM code - you can then find the offset of the call and just edit the call --> 90s

Easier said than done. You may encounter anti cracking techniques in the program or CRC checks...and of course it's still not easy without those things.

All in all, I think it's a case of you going to google; getting the tools; learning ASM and Windows API better than the back of your hand; reading tons of guides on "Cracking" or "Reverse engineering"

Of course an another thing you could do is mail the guys at wine and talk about your problem - instead of learning the redundant win32 stuff, how about learning to program in linux and fix the problem yourself :D

Have fun :)

Steve

Thanx... hey, i bin linuxing so long i forgot that not everything is open source... lol.

here's what ive done so far...

i opened the EXE with a Hex editor and found 2 'CD 15' instructions (which are the compiled Hex versions of the assembly 'int 15'), and replaced them with '90 90' (which is the NOP)

as i expected, this caused the splash screen to instantly close, However the main window did not function correctly....

if you have ever programmed in raw Windows API, and you forget to call the message handler loop.... well, that happened. the window does not re-draw its space when covered / un-covered.

i wonder, why is it that wine have implimented all the complexities of DirecX sound, and other things, but have not done somthing as simple as a timer call... ?

oh well... looks like i will have to try wineX. (whatever its new name is)
doing anything more is waaaaay beyond my ability.

thankx for the help though.

No worries, like I said it wasn't easy - do please report back on how winex4 treats you (it's new name is cedega but I refuse to use it :P)

Steve

i cant remember the new name, but its very clever...

cedega is a grape used to make PORT WINE.... clever

+5 informative :)

That is far too clever - maybe if they didn't pay people to work on new names and
got on with getting good games to work (well; games i like anyway :) ) it'd be a lot
better :D

Steve