I came across this problem when I noticed some of my old programs failed to run under modern Windows.
Here is a miniature example, built via mingw64
.text
.global start
start:
subq $0x48,%rsp
xorl %ecx,%ecx
call *__imp_ExitProcess(%rip)
addq $0x48,%rsp
ret
gcc a.s -nostdlib -nostartfiles -lkernel32 -Wl,-e,start,-s
A message box says the exe is not valid Win32 program when I open it. However the program runs successfully when I add .lcomm a,1 or
.bss
.int 0
to the source file, both effectively inserting .bss section into the exe file. Adding .data section does not solve the problem.
Is this an inherent restriction of Windows or a bug inside ld?
EDIT: Ok. I've found many exe files without .bss or any section with uninitialized data but run well nevertheless. But this does not fully answer my question. Why my program with only .data , .text and .idata unable to run?
EDIT V2: I think I have found the cause. The value of OptionalHeader.SizeOfImage is incorrect. Changing it to correct value solves the problem. So this is most likely a bug inside ld.