[bgrimm]

Greetings,

I've developed an unusual problem on all 3 of my Windows XP boxes
(SP1 with all windows updates).

(All executables noted below disply fine on my Windows 2000sp4 machine)

A few weeks ago I had noticed a trainer I had been using to play a
game suddenly stopped displaying any text in the command buttons
on the form. I figured not a big deal, must be something odd that
happened to that particular file. (although in early December I know
it did in fact have the text displayed).

(That particular file was coded in Tasm and packed with FSG)
Now I've noticed many compressed executables I have, in any language, (VB,
asm,VC,etc...) will not display text in labels and command buttons at all.
They are functional, but display no captions.

At first I thought it must be something related to compressing the resources
section causing a problem. But after some investigating of the problem
programs and some experiments on some of my own coded programs, most
of the resources were not even compressed in the first place.

Then I thought it specific perhaps to one or more API calls that display the
window (ex: DialogBoxParamA), but after examining the code of all the exe's
I tested, many used different ways of displaying the window.
If I unpack (manually or with tools) any of the problem programs, they display fine.

With one particular test a dialogbox looked fine with a resource editor in the
packed file, but once again was blank upon loading the executable.

This problem shows it self with many, but not all packers, (FSG, Yoda Crypt,
MEW, EXEShield, all show blank buttons,labels, etc), But PECompact, for example did not.

One trainer I noticed that did not display correctly, did not even use standard
dialog/window display API instead using CreateCompatibleDC and bitblt'ing to show a background
(that looked normal), then had two blank but functioning buttons on it.)

Sorry for the long-winded explanation, but I'm not sure both how to explain it
and how I should approach figuring out what is happening.

- I'm confident in my ability to manually unpack those above packers, but at
the same time I'm not so good I can find and watch how it restores the IAT and API calls to see if something is amiss in the unpacking code.
(I'm still often Imprec depandant on some of the rebuilding).

- Some of the packed executables don't even have seperate resouce sections, so I thought
that would rule out specific problems with section info like improper flags.

- Or is there something that has changed in the xp system dll's after windows
update got a hold of them (note: Not running sp2, just a fully patched sp1)
(which does not make sense since unpacked exe's display fine.)

But like I said, all the excutables display fine after unpacking.

Any suggestions on where to start, or anyone seen similar behavoir?
-bg