Scratching my head here... my DLL (let's call it version 52) isn't loading in Windows 8.1. I've read up on the known bug in Windows that results in this problem when the DLL has an empty section, and according to PEBrowsePro version 52 has an empty section, however this DLL loads fine with Windows 7.

Version 51 of the DLL loads OK with Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, and has no empty sections, but was assembled with an earlier version of fasm. I re-assemble version 51 with fasm 1.71.17, PEBrowsePro shows no empty sections, and according to my users it fails with Windows 8.1. A byte-for-byte comparison of the older version 51 and today's version 51 (the 1.71.17 build) shows a few small differences.

I don't have access to Windows 8.1 so I'm relying on my users to test the DLL with Windows 8.1 and it's possible the users are getting versions mixed up. Have there been other reports of problems with fasm 1.71.17 and Windows 8.1? Any work-arounds?

Try to compile with 1.71.20 - IIRC, there was some bug fixed concerning fixups.

Some older version of fasm used different PE flag bit settings. But this was some time ago now so the original version 51 would have to be very old. PE and DLL files will always show changes in the date and version fields when assembled at different times and with different version of fasm, this is normal. Other parts of the PE binary do not change if the incoming source is the same.

Without more information there isn't much we can do to help you. Perhaps you can post the diff? Or the source?

Thanks for the responses. I wasn't aware of 1.71.20. Is there somewhere I can find the fixes or other changes for each release? I'll try 1.71.20 on Monday.