PE Explorer: Win32 Disassembler
The PE Explorer disassembler is designed to be easy to use compared with other disassemblers. To that end, some of the functionality found in other products has been left out in order to keep the process simple , fast and easy to use . The PE Explorer disassembler assumes that some manual editing of the reproduced code will be needed. To facilitate additional hand coding, however, the disassembler utilizes a qualitative algorithm designed to reconstruct the assembly language source code of target files with the highest degree of accuracy possible. While as powerful as the more expensive, dedicated disassemblers, PE Explorer focuses on ease of use, clarity and navigation. We just made a good disassembler at a reasonable price. It will save you hours of time and it's easy to use!
The Disassembler opens a second window. Before the disassembly process the Options window displays the following options:
Once you pressed Start Now, the disassembly process begins by identifying the compiler used to build the target file. Forehand knowledge of how a compiler puts files together improves the guesswork involved in determining the data allocation patterns within the target file. Moreover, given this information, identifying most of the objects, procedures, variables, types etc. of the target file can be achieved with a very high degree of accuracy.
Only various Borland® compilers are currently identified. The disassembler will decompile files built with other compilers too. At this time, however, it will only display specifically identified internal items for files compiled with Borland® compilers. During the disassembly process the Processing Info window displays the following information:
Disassembling files larger than 1 Mb in size can take several minutes depending on the capabilities of your system. Generally, each byte of a target file requires 40 bytes of memory for processing. For example, a 1 Mb file would require 40 Mb of processing memory, a 2 Mb file, 80 Mb and so on.
The main Disassembler window appears when the disassembly process finishes:
After all processing has been completed, the disassembler displays the resulting source code for the target file. This output can be manually edited or saved to disk for future reference.
Although the customized modeling performed by the PE Explorer Disassembler does increase processing time, the result is a dramatic reduction of incorrect opcode translations. We think you will agree that that the extra time needed to achieve this high level of accuracy is justly compensated for by the time saved when hand correcting the output. Known LimitationsAt this time, features in the disassembly implementation do not allow for producing source code that could be recompiled as is. File sections in which the physical size equals 0 and the data is located behind the boundaries of the physical size of the section cannot be accurately translated. The disassembler marks these items [DB Count DUP (??)] and does not place labels inside these areas. These kinds of sections arise because programmers often request memory and then fail to manage it properly, relying entirely on the operating system or the compiler to release the memory resources. For example (in Pascal):
Var MyData: Array [WORD] of Byte;
In this case, the space for storing the variable MyData will not be allocated physically in the data section, but the virtual size of the data section containing it will be increased by a WORD value. It also happens that variables declared in this fashion will result in lost megabytes of virtual space for the containing data section.
At present, due to the features of the internal data structures in PE Explorer and for the reasons cited above, mismanaged memory allocations are excluded from disassembly. Otherwise, the memory expenditure required to process target files could grow astronomically. Currently, each byte of incoming data requires 30-40 bytes of memory to process.
 Download PE Explorer and learn how it can make you more productive.
|
Windows 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista
