Topic created on: February 28, 2008 08:47 CST by jeffporter .

Hello all,

Sorry for my first post being a newbie quesion, but....

I'm trying to look into a little DOS program.
Note: The program requies "VBDRT10E.EXE" to be present.

When I load it in IDA I get the message...

"possibly a packed file, continue?"

So I click yes, I then get a message in the 'IDA View-a' of...

"start endp ; sp-analysis failed"

The log file produced seem to show it loaded correctly.

My question is...

Should I worry about the sp-analysis?
Do I need to unpack the exe file somehow first?

Thanks for taking the time to read this.
:-)

Jeff

P.s. before I get flamed, I've done asm back at uni, but I've been mostly living in the world of Java for the last 11years.

<snip>
The initial autoanalysis has been finished.
Unloading IDP module C:\Program Files\IDA\procs\pc.w32...
<snip>
Loading IDP module C:\Program Files\IDA\procs\pc.w32 for processor metapc...OK
Autoanalysis subsystem has been initialized.
Possible file format: MS-DOS executable (EXE) (C:\Program Files\IDA\loaders\dos.ldw)
Loading file 'C:\DOSPROG\test\SKIP.EXE' into database...
Detected file format: MS-DOS executable (EXE)
Reading relocation table...
  0. Creating a new segment  (0000D840-00010BA0) ... ... OK
  1. Creating a new segment  (00010B20-00010BA0) ... ... OK
Dummy segment at 0x0 (next segment at 0xD840)
  2. Creating a new segment  (00000000-0000D840) ... ... OK
Searching for the data segment...
Looking for ' - Copyright'...
Assuming __cdecl calling convention by default
Marking typical code sequences...
Flushing buffers, please wait...ok
File 'C:\DOSPROG\SKIP.EXE' is successfully loaded into the database.
Compiling file 'C:\Program Files\IDA\idc\ida.idc'...
Executing function 'main'...
Compiling file 'C:\Program Files\IDA\idc\onload.idc'...
Executing function 'OnLoad'...
IDA is analysing the input file...
You may start to explore the input file right now.
The initial autoanalysis has been finished.