I tried recStudio and that crashes on me as well, when trying to work with this app. I'm starting to think that I don't have the hardware/OS necessary to solve this one, which is frustrating. When was the last time someone solved this? Also, if anyone has solved this on Vista, Windows 7, WINE, dosemu, or ???, please let me know. Much appreciated.

@tommy9 , if this is too much info,say and i'll edit it.
Note:I have not done this mission yet.

recStudio GUI seems a bit buggy, so put app4.exe into the
same folder as RecStud.exe and fire up recStudio, then at the bottom of the GUI theres a command bar
type >Load app4.exe(or whatever youve named it)
and give it some time to load and you should be away.

For a debugger,
You Can try CodeView 16bit debugger, but you will have to
do some work to get it up and running.
It is old school and cranky and sucks up CPU.
Google for it and you should find some install instructions,
which are not to be taken lightly.

Tried it on an old desktop with Win XP pro and it works
on that.
It is scary and i dont know if it shows enough info to
solve this mission, so I can't recommend it.

I hope this info helps somebody.
For me i dont know enough ASM,
so it's back to Randall Hyde.

I cracked the tutorial app alright. It was easy as pie. But the Hertz crackme is really mind boggling. I'd be glad to find a debugger like TR that can trace through it because I don't understand RecStudio at all. I look at all that assembly code with so many unfamiliar instructions it makes my head spin. How do we figure out which procedure is the password checking procedure from the very long list of procedures detected?

And has anyone tried cracking it using other debuggers like the MS-DEBUG or Borland's Turbo Debugger or even HIEW? (which is not really a debugger)

I have cracked the app on windows vista. I used a disassembler and a debugger (GRDB). This debugger is generally an extended version of the MS-DEBUG program in windows.

The problems for me began with valid passwords for the app, but not for thisislegal and the slightly misleading good boy message.

Greetings,
sambo

I downloaded GRDB yesterday but it won't run on my system (Win 7, 64-bit)
How did you get it to run on Vista? Did you use DOSBOX or something similar?

Thanks for helping!
xyberz09