4xxx Internal error M##/## after ~20 commands

After entering approximately 20 commands I see the message

4xxx internal error M##/## contact JPsoft technical support

and 4XXX crashes. Either it hangs or the window closes. Does anybody know what this is, and how to stop it from happening?

This is the Frequently Given Answer to that question.

Mike Bessy at JP Software Technical Support always tries to be circumspect about this sort of thing, and suggests that you might have corrupted the distribution archive when downloading it, or might have entered your branding information incorrectly, and requests that you try downloading a fresh copy of the distribution archive from the official sources and branding it, and if that doesn't work that you privately mail the output of the VER /R command to him.

But none of the rest of us work for JP Software, and don't need to be so restrained. The branding program has safeguards, and if you are bright enough to use a command line you are more than bright enough to have spotted a CRC error being reported when you were using PKZIP to extract the JP Software files.

So let's be frank:

The trouble is that the program that you are using to hack JP Software's programs and to avoid paying for them doesn't work. Mike asks people to mail the output of VER /R to him, because he knows that as soon as they run that command they'll see that it all too plainly shows that they've cracked the program and not paid for it, and won't dare to mail the results to JP Software. Of all the people who have ever reported this error over the past couple of years, every single one of them has gone strangely quiet when faced with this request from Mike. Not one has ever come back with a reply saying that they downloaded a fresh copy, branded it, it worked, and thank you very much Mr Bessy and everyone else who replied.

If you read TRIAL.TXT you will discover that a couple of years ago, JP Software's command interpreters were changed so that when the registration period expires, they limit the number of interactive commands that can be entered by dropping dead after a certain number of them have been. Ironically, using cracking programs on these versions of the command interpreters triggers that behaviour to start immediately. It also causes the command interpreter to crash, rather than to exit cleanly. (This is possibly simply a side-effect of a bug in the cracking program, but it is a side-effect that legitimate users welcome, as does JP Software itself, no doubt.)

The solution is to register your softwares legitimately. The amount of time, money, and effort that it takes to develop, test, and run a new cracking program (which will probably still be buggy) almost certainly exceeds the cost of filling out the order form, sending it off to JP Software, and obtaining a proper registered version of the command interpreter.

And, of course, a registered version remains registered with successive minor releases of the product and can be easily branded with the branding utility. As people have discovered very publically on Usenet in the past, much to their own embarrassment, the same doesn't hold true for cracking programs.