Editing a compressed exe?

[Overclocked412]

What do I need to open and edit a compressed .exe? For example, I tried opening this exe up in resource hacker, and it says its a compressed exe. Here is the help file description of it:

A number of applications have been compressed with an “EXE compressor” (or “
packer”) after they have been compiled to reduce the size of a program. This has a side-effect of making it more difficult to view and modify resources.

anyway to 'uncompress' it by chance?

[Steve R Jones]

Even if you get it open will you know what to do when you get there. Not to mention re-compliing it?

[Overclocked412]

Im sure I could figure it out. Im a decent pc techie, just not really into software programming and such. I run a couple of programs that Ive changed around in reshacker, in it, is the option, to compile after youve made changes, and I always do before I save it. no problems yet. Plus, It automatically makes a backup of the exe, when u edit it, so even if I do goof, no harm done. Im just trying to find out how to get into this one inperticular, all I want to do is rearange some dialogs and such in the program, make it easier for me to navigate and stuff. its pretty basic. Do you know how to decompile?

[wju425]

Is it a self extracting zip file? You might be able to open it with winzip.

\o/ Billy

[Overclocked412]

heh, if only it were that easy, but no this is a whole different ....thing. lol.

Opening the file depends upon the algorithm used to compress the file. I recommend viewing the file with a HEX editor to locate any text strings that may point towards the compression engine being used.

UPX is the most commonly used executable compression utility. I have authored a condensed guide to using UPX, available here....

http://www.xtremepccentral.com/modul...ticle&artid=30

Robert Richmond