Recently I opened a .dll file produced by Visual Studio 9 while compiling a native C++ DLL project and was surprised to see the "This program cannot be run in DOS mode" text near the beginning.
Why have this text in .dll files?
Recently I opened a .dll file produced by Visual Studio 9 while compiling a native C++ DLL project and was surprised to see the "This program cannot be run in DOS mode" text near the beginning.
Why have this text in .dll files?
A dll is very much like an executable with a different extension. The text you saw is part of the 'standard' executable header on windows. It is (was) used to gracefully abort the attempt to run a windows executable from DOS.
Win32 programs run from DOS mode (ie, single user, no graphics) print that text. DLLs probably print that message too if you try to use them without Windows running.