hello:
the situation is this:
under windows ME, when i doubleclick the EXEDEMO icon( the source is this:
; fasm example of writing simple EXE program
format mz

push cs
pop ds

mov ah,9
mov dx,hello
int 21h

mov ax,4C00h
int 21h
hello db 'Hello world!',24h)
I get a "EXEDEMO.EXE is not a valid win32 aplication" error
so I think: "well off course is not a win32 aplication" but I dont get that
error in other dos programs, not even in the com's.
so I change de messege to 'Hello wooooooooooooooooooooorld!',24h
and after that when I doubleclick the icon the dosbox apears with the
messege on it.
I try several values and I get to 'Hello woooooorld!',24h that makes
the file 64bytes long, if I take a byte,then I get the problem again
is fasm generating a small file? maybe a small header?(sorry inglish)
I also notice that this problem do not hapen in winXP.
is it a bug?

Imho it is a bug - in Windows ME .exe loader.

Indeed it is some kind of error - I met it some time ago. Seems that windows doesn't wan't to load EXE files smaler than 64 bytes (IIRC).

Note that it always works when you execute that program from command line window - only trying to execute very small executables from the explorer directly doesn't work in some Windows versions.

I think this is due to the fact that windows explorer checks the size of the executable file and it can't 'believe' it's so small
Microsoft has got too used to its own bloatware

You could do this:


The RB 64 will make sure the EXE is longer than 64 bytes.