Q1: is this section related to windows programming, or general fasm programming?

Q2: what should be under this section? or it should be empty?

Q3: what is the purpose of this section? how do i use it and what will i get from it?

A1: Windows.
A2: FASM will fill it. You don't need to do anything special about it.
A3: It contains fixups/relocations, without which the executable can only be loaded by Windows at a fixed address in memory. You can research relocation to see its benefits.

In a system that uses page translation (i.e. all versions of Windows since NT) the fixups section isn't needed. But if you want to take advantage of ASLR then you'll need fixups for that.

It is also possible to write code that is 100% relocatable with no fixed addresses, and thus no fixups generated. It is tricky to do in 32-bit code, and easier to do in 64-bit code. But the Windows loader likes to fail if you have an empty fixups section. Usually you can generate a dummy fixups section to bypass the problem with the loader.

A2: FASM will fill it.
thats nice, thanks.

revolution, the things you mentioned are way above my knowledge/understanding level.
i want to learn more, anyway thank you so much revolution.

what does it affect? my data or my code?

then does it make static or dynamic?

sorry tho, i have some difficulties to understand your wording.

Addresses in both. Without it, addresses are fixed. With it, Windows is likely to place your program at different addresses every time you run it. You probably don't need to know more at this time.


I don't know what you're talking about.

i think you are wrong, when debugging my program it appears that it have module addresses for my code.
which means they are static and they dont change, in other words not dynamic.

but my data unde section .data are dynamic, each time i load the program the address change.

with exception for section .bss which contains static data addresses.

There is no documentation about what address Windows loads programs into when you have a .relocs section. Usually Windows just loads your program at the same address it was compiled for. But since MS don't say what happens, then it is not guaranteed to always be there. If ASLR is active then Windows might decide to relocate it, or it might decide not to. Both would be okay according to the spec.

relocs are needed mostly for 32-bit dlls. Think of absolute addressing. Consider: This is essentially a: instruction, with 'immediate' filled by the linker (or FASM).

Now, a DLL gets mapped/loaded into a process' addressing space. Each process has a different address space. However, what should the address of some_dll_global_var be? By default, this is based on the base address of the DLL.

However, depending on the process, this "base address" could be taken by something else. So, the dll has to be relocated to a different base address. But then our mov eax will be wrong since it will point to original absolute base address.

.reloc section stores relocations: offsets relative to the DLL's base address. In this case, one of the relocations will point to the mov eax instruction's immediate and directly change the immediate in the code. The Windows loader then goes through all such offsets, and adjusts them by the difference between the new base address and the default one. (yes, it does change the code itself before it's set to "read only", changes the immediate in this case). The format is a bit complicated, but you don't have to know that now.


Most executables don't need relocations because they are always loaded at the same address. However, ASLR (randomized base address, basically) requires relocations, for obvious reasons, even for executables.

ok guys i have a question:

- what api is responsible for get imae base address?

You may try GetModuleHandle. The HMODULE it returns is actually the image base address since 32-bit versions of Windows.

thank you.