Windows program detects debugger and quits

Paul pej2000 at earthlink.net
Fri Oct 25 17:50:32 CDT 2002


On Friday 25 October 2002 03:05 pm, Zsolt Rizsanyi wrote:
> On Friday 25 October 2002 19:31, Peter Andersson wrote:
> > Hiya!
> > Maybe this program checks the debugging processor registers
> > somehow?
> >
> > Wine Gurus out there: Could this be the explanation?
> >
> > The ptrace syscall which Wine uses,setup the process in debug mode
> > (thus using the debug registers). Probably some kind of copy
> > protection in the ACR program checks the debug registers somehow.
> >
> > I believe wine is heavily dependent of the ptrace call (correct me if Im
> > wrong, Wine gurus),  for example for catching DOS interupts.
> > Unless there is a way to turn off ptrace calls in Wine, or you hack your
> > app to not do these checks, you wont be able to run your program.
>
> You could try set winver to nt40.
> Programs usually use different methods to detect if they are debugged when
> they detect that they run on NT.
>
> Eg. the programs guarded with safedisc also checked for debug registers,
> but when you set winver to nt40 much less checks are done.
>
> > On Thursday 24 October 2002 01.49, Paul wrote:
> > > I am trying to run a windows program called ACR with Wine on a Mandrake
> > > system. The install goes beautifully (thanks to all of those
> > > hardworking programmers!). But when I try to run ACR it complains that
> > > Windows is being run in Debug mode and quits.
>
> Maybe your program is guarded with safedisc, or some similar guard
> mechanism.
>
> If it is safedisc, then by patching wine you could enable it to run your
> program.
> You can check if it is safedisc protected by following the FAQ sent by
> Laurent Pinchart to the wine-devel list. You should search the archives.
> Hmm. I tried to search the archives, and it seems, that it is not
> searchable. So I'm attaching the faq. Though maybe there is an updated
> version somewhere.
>
> > > This is also what happened when trying to run ACR on Win4Lin. Does this
> > > make running ACR hopeless on any emmulator or is there a way around
> > > this?
>
> No. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English did not run under VMWare.
> But now it works under wine + safedisc patch.
> So surely there IS hope :).
>
> Regards
> Zsolt
Thanks again for the response. 
The ACR disc is Safedisc 2 protected. I've used Winex to play a Safedisc2 
protected game, so I understand that this is not an absolute limitation. 
Unfortunately, winex apparently doesn't have MDAC worked out (whatever that 
is) as the install crashes there.

The document you sent suggests that safedisc 1 should work with the current 
wine version, and suggests trying different winverions. I edited my config 
file several times with different version but with no success. Error: A 
debugger has been detected. Unload debugger and try again.

I'm not sure if installing with wine and running with winex would be very easy 
to do. 

Regards,
Paul




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