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Best Executable Compressor Programs

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Sentinel:
Sentinel, the problem with UPX and later-version VC executables is the "load config" data generated. You can use a tool like HIEW to nuke it, then UPX won't have any problems. Or I guess I could code a small tool to do this.
-f0dder (January 14, 2006, 01:32 PM)
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Yep, I don't disagree and using the 'force' switch also works, not to mention the various ways of compiling your code that also avoids the problem, I just get the feeling that if it [UPX] is not happy about compressing my exe I'm not happy about letting it either.  I guess my main issue with UPX is the lack of progress over the past 4 years and that really IS a long time in the exe packing arena.

Sometimes ......size does matter.  We are working on a program and the executable is about 24MB.  We want to shrink it down as much as possible so it can be downloaded or emailed.
-jdd
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Yes size does matter to a point, but relative to compatibility it is irrelevant.  If you save 10kb over an alternative product but your compressed exe only works on 50% of your customers PCs then you are in far from an ideal position.  Sadly in the world of 'program for pleasure' exe compressors this is an all too common problem.  Outside of ASPack, UPX and PECompact I wouldn't trust any exe compressors as far as I could throw them no matter how good the compression ratio may be.  Even with the 'tried and trusted' compressors there may be certain situations where I would avoid them like the plague.

Sentinel:
If you absolutely must have the best compression out there then WinUnpack appears to be the current leader.

http://dwing.go.nease.net/

Unfortunately the official website seems about as stable as the packer IMHO.

mrainey:
I use EXECryptor to protect and compress ( http://www.strongbit.com ).  It will prevent reverse engineering of an executable.  According to the crackers over at http://forum.exetools.com, nobody has broken the encryption yet.  I tried using the registration key feature of EXECryptor, but it was cracked pretty quickly.  Now I just gut the demos by removing a lot of code, then encrypt them.

EXECryptor compresses a 2 meg executable down to about 450k.  I haven't heard any complaints about compatibility or speed from my customers.

If you buy it, don't waste your time asking for help from the developer.  He never answers.

f0dder:
Yep, I don't disagree and using the 'force' switch also works, not to mention the various ways of compiling your code that also avoids the problem

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Oh, which ways are that? I tried looking for compiler/linker settings to avoid the generation of load config data, but couldn't find any.

Btw, using --force to solve the problem sometimes produces crashing executables.

db90h:
Sometimes ......size does matter.  We are working on a program and the executable is about 24MB.  We want to shrink it down as much as possible so it can be downloaded or emailed.
-jdd (January 14, 2006, 12:35 PM)
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For most executables of this size, PECompact performs best anyway.. particularly v2.76b. I won't re-iterate the very intelligent arguments others have made here.. but you need to not choose a packer that creates a 0.1% smaller executable without evaluating it as a whole.

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