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One of my clients has an application that was written for them using VB6. They no longer have the original resources that were given to the developer. The developer has disappeared off the face of the earth. My challenge is to extract the resources from the executable and rebuild the application, adding new material to it.

I've tried using Resource Hacker, but that only finds the icon. The exe is over 26MB, I can't see that the only resource embedded is the icon.

Edit: I do not to retrieve the source code from this. Decompiling is not the objective. I merely want the embedded media resources so that I can utilise them in the application which I am rewriting from scratch. Please do not confuse the word "resources" with "source code".

Is there a way to extract just the resources?

Jonathan Leffler
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Richard C
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  • Resource Hacker will only show your the complied jump code dude, you'll never retrieve the raw VB code you typed in that method. Unfortuntely I have never seen a method to do this and my googling came up blank. – Glycerine Apr 30 '10 at 10:18
  • I am not interested in decompiling the application. I simply need the media resources that are embedded into the exe file. – Richard C May 05 '10 at 09:28

5 Answers5

2

A vanilla VB6 exe has 'Icon', 'Icon Group' & 'Version Info' resources that should be visible in resource hacker, as should any resources added via the VB6 resource tool or VS's RC.EXE.

Its a fat EXE so perhaps the author packed it? There are utilities that will try to determince what packer (if any) was used.

Alex K.
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  • Downloaded it, and my anti-virus denied me access to it. Not sure if it's a false positive, but I'm not going to take any chances. Are there any others that you can recommend? – Richard C May 05 '10 at 09:24
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    How about http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/File-Analyzer-Download-30.html Shows me "Processed with(1): Packed with UPX v0.93 or v1.00 [PE]" for a upx packed exe. – Alex K. May 05 '10 at 11:19
  • I've posted the output from File Analyzer on pastebin http://pastebin.com/Qbhiu7T3 I'm not sure what the information means. Are you able to shed some light on it? – Richard C May 10 '10 at 12:55
  • Doesn't look like its packed then. This decompiler (http://www.vb-decompiler.org/download.htm) claims to be able to recover FRX files (the proprietary resource format images are stored in when set in the ide) open the exe then plugins->FRXView (Worked-ish for me) – Alex K. May 10 '10 at 13:44
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I think you meant to get the source code back from exe file (compiled with VB6). It's almost impossible if the program is compiled in native code, but it's easier if the program is compiled in P-Code. You can try VB Decompiler and find a reverse-engineer to manually convert some of the readable Assembly code to VB6 code. But, i suggest you just find the source code of the program from the programmer, it's cheaper than decompiling.

Zai
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  • +1. Other questions about VB6 decompilers: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/678544/free-vb-6-0-decompiler http://stackoverflow.com/questions/414068/is-there-a-vb6-decompiler http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1406015/decompiler-for-visual-basic-6-program – MarkJ May 01 '10 at 13:09
  • No. I am not interested in the source code. I want the resources that have been embedded within the exe. Any videos, images or audio. – Richard C May 05 '10 at 07:51
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Try vbreformer. It will recover parts of the sourcecode along with events hooked to buttons and so fourth, and from native code. I know you don't want this, but it's part of the more complete application. It will recover the vb6 menu resources too. It's limited, but it's more than you'll get with a normal resource editor. There is also a trial version available.

Martijn Pieters
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ant
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  • I downloaded VBReformer today from http://www.decompiler-vb.net/ and McAfee reported it as containing the Artemis trojan. – Alan B Feb 06 '14 at 14:20
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http://strategoxt.org/Transform/VisualBasicDecompilers

Take a look at the tools from the above link and see if any of them are able to extract enough for you.

hth

Sijin
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  1. Perhaps they are the only windows resources the application has.

  2. Visual Studio has a resource editor(I've checked VS2008.net, and it has one)

  3. You might want to try a different resource editor http://www.wilsonc.demon.co.uk/d10resourceeditor.htm

mikek3332002
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    This application is not able to list any more than what resource hacker could. Thank you for suggesting it though. – Richard C May 10 '10 at 12:14