Have you ever wondered how small a Windows program can be? In this age of megabytes, gigabytes, and (now) terabytes, you may find it hard to believe that you really only need two or four bytes for a minimalist program that does absolutely nothing. Well, almost nothing.

The following screenshots illustrate how to create a two or four byte COM program that will execute on any Windows machine.

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If you choose to follow these instructions, please make very sure that you follow them exactly or irreparable damage may occur to your computer. If you are not really sure what this means, please reconsider performing the indicated operations.

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The first example creates a four byte COM program called "nothing.com" that properly informs the operating system that it is shutting down and thereby terminates execution. The second two byte COM program called "nothing2.com" uses a command that has not been officially supported since the release of DOS 2.0, but still works on today's PCs.

This is, BTW, a marvelous feat of backwards compatibility

Example 1:

Example 2: