I'd like to do to my project an DLL file with resource only. Like menus, bitmaps, icons [and maybe strings]. (I want to free my .exe of get so big)

Can anyone tell me how can I do an DLL resouve only, and use it in my app?

Instead of loading resources from your hInstance or the result of GetModuleHandle(0), load them from the HMODULE of your DLL. (The result of LoadLibrary).

But why? Why's it better to have two files instead of 1? It will actually be bigger since the filesystem has an alignment for files.

Just in case of my .exe get bigger than 2mb (bc of resources), it will run faster if I separate the resources in a dll, don't? So I load only when needed.

ps: 2mb was just a example.

Maybe, you could always just append them to the end of the .exe manually (without being part of a section!) like installers do, which can be really big (gigabytes even).

*_* how??

I don't know how to do it with normal FASM 'format PE' to be honest. But you can append the resources with a simple command after the program is compiled, like:

"copy /B main.exe+resources"

(command line append) -- of course you'll probably have to know the size of your .exe before appending the resources in the source code itself and use it as 'offset' to start reading the resources from, which I don't know if it's possible to get the size of the file with normal 'format PE' FASM -- I use manual macros to make the PE file with 'format binary' where you can get the size.

If it sounds too complicated then go with your method, but should you wish to try this later, maybe to improve yourself, hope it helped.

but how do you load the content of that address? for instance using LoadIcon,0,address? or manually? and you will have to know the size of icon\bitmaps\etc.. seems too complicated..

Well I thought you were talking about 'custom' resources, i.e custom data, not the Windows resources -- because I didn't think Windows resources were so big

(obviously I was thinking of 'ReadFile' just like reading any data )