HyperTerminal: removing comreads.dbg and comused.dbg

HyperTerminal is the terminal emulator supplied with Windows 2000, XP and some of the not-quite-32-bit versions of Windows. When it is run, it creates two log files named "comreads.dbg" and "comused.dbg" in the current directory, which is especially annoying when you start it from a shortcut on your desktop: however, if you see those files on your desktop you can easily erase them. It gets even more annoying when they end up in some directory where you don't notice them, such as your C: drive, and after days and months of using HyperTerminal they grow to disproportionate sizes (like several gigabytes) and fill up your hard disk. So, how can you stop HyperTerminal from creating those pretty useless files?

The question has been asked several times on the Hilgraeve forums, but nobody provided a solution. It is especially worrying that nobody from Hilgraeve cared to answer at all, which somehow kills any hope of getting useful support for what is a rather crappy piece of software anyway.

Here is a workaround, but I'm afraid you'll have to patch hypertrm.dll...

Do it yourself (only for programmers and hackers alike):
open hypertrm.dll in an hex editor, seach for "comreads.dbg" and "comused.dbg" and replace them with "\\.\NUL". Remember to place a 0 byte at the end of the string.