Thread: MASM -> /ALIGN:4 doesn't work

Hey,
if there are any MASM coders, please help me out!

i'm trying to achieve smaller executable sizes using /ALIGN:4
but all i get is an application error (0xc0000018), when the executable is run.
this example runs fine under winXP, but not under windows 7.

you'd say i have to use at lease 512 align, but i've seen handcrafted PE stubs with no align at all, yet working.
so how do i manage this? do i have to write the PE header myself, or is there any other option to remove the align?

any ideas?


code:

Code:

.386
.model flat, stdcall
option casemap :none

include \masm32\include\kernel32.inc
includelib \masm32\lib\kernel32.lib

.code
start:
	invoke ExitProcess, 0
end start

compiled with that commandline:

Code:

\masm32\bin\ml /c /coff /nologo test.asm
\masm32\bin\Link /SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS /MERGE:.rdata=.text /ALIGN:4 test.obj > nul

Funny feeling that ALIGN is not guaranteed compatible over different versions of windows

Linker Tools Warning LNK4108 (C++)

Originally Posted by Devils Child

Hm...

do you have any other ideas?
like hand-crafted PE binaries? i haven't found any examples yet... do you have any?

There are examples out there but they will probably suffer the same problems when moving between platforms.

I believe there's a minimum size of about 1Kb that a program must be to conform to the PE format. You can get it below this but its not portable. COM files can be smaller but they are run in a dos emulator and so are restricted in what they can do.

Why would you need such a small exe and need to move it between machines?