[Bug 42125] 4k/8k demos often fail with 'Bad EXE Format' or 'error c0000020' due to Crinkler executable file compressor's "optimized" usage of PE header fields (loader compatibility)

[WineHQ Bugzilla]

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42125

Oleg Kuznetsov  changed:

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--- Comment #17 from Oleg Kuznetsov  ---
(In reply to Anastasius Focht from comment #11)
> Hello folks,
>
> --- snip ---
>
> The PE compressor used for most of these 4K/8K demos is named "Crinkler":
>
> http://www.crinkler.net/
>
> --- quote ---
> Crinkler is an executable file compressor (or rather, a compressing linker)
> for Windows specifically targeted towards executables with a size of just a
> few kilobytes. As of 2018, it is the most widely used tool for compressing
> 4k intros.
>
> Crinkler is being developed by Rune L. H. Stubbe (Mentor/TBC) and Aske Simon
> Christensen (Blueberry/Loonies). 
> --- quote ---
>
> The compression itself and some parts of imports resolver are nicely covered
> here:
>
> http://code4k.blogspot.de/2010/12/crinkler-secrets-4k-intro-executable.html
>
> Original presentation:
> ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/parties/2005/assembly05/seminars/crinkler-
> compression.ppt (check "Header optimization" slides)
>
> The decompression area for code, data etc. starts usually at fixed 0x420000
> address range.
> One can easily bypass all the decompression stuff from entry and set a
> hardware breakpoint on execution to 0x420000.

I'd like to note, that the source of the tool was released a few days ago:
https://github.com/runestubbe/Crinkler/