UPX: the Ultimate Packer for eXecutables

[Gary]

Hi All!

UPX can *significantly* reduce the size of both executables and dlls, allowing more programs to be 'packed' onto a USB drive. No additional software is required for the executables or dlls to work. A side benefit can be a faster loading program.

UPX itself is a command line utility that lives here:

http://upx.sourceforge.net/

However, UPX GUIs have been developed, and a nice one, UPX Tool, resides here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... _id=123928

UPX Tool has a copy of UPX in its bin folder, but it's not the most current version. Just replace the older version in the bin folder with the newer one from the first site.

Examples:
* firefox (6.83MB) -> compressed to 2.89MB
* Gimp-2.2 (3.23MB) -> compressed to 966KB


--Gary :)

[Killing Joke]

The *very best* UPXShell I found (I tried a lot) is "UPXShell" coded by "smarmotte".
It has a clean, small and usefull design, and works like a charm in a portable environnment (even if, of course, if you want to add it to the explorer contextual right menu, it has to write a few things in the registry).

Sadly, I don't know where to find it on the web anymore (no author website in the about box, many other tools called "UPXShell" on the web) !

Here's a screenshot :

[Fluffy]

Only problem is that there is some performance loss. I tried UPX packing a few games and my framerate dropped a bit. For other apps though, this really is quite a nice little tool!

[Toxteth O'Grady]

The *very best* UPXShell I found (I tried a lot) is "UPXShell" coded by "smarmotte".
It has a clean, small and usefull design, and works like a charm in a portable environnment (even if, of course, if you want to add it to the explorer contextual right menu, it has to write a few things in the registry).

Sadly, I don't know where to find it on the web anymore (no author website in the about box, many other tools called "UPXShell" on the web) !

Here's a screenshot :

Are you joking? "UPXShell" combined with "smarmotte" is not really a usual combination.
You can get it here: http://serenity.pixelarmy.org/unpacking.htm

[Gary]

"PECompact2 is a next generation win32 executable/module compressor. Commonly termed an 'executable packer', such utilities compress executables and modules (i.e. *.EXE, *.DLL, *.OCX, *.SCR). At runtime the compressed modules are rapidly decompressed in memory."

Trial & Student* versions available.

*The student build is free for use by freeware authors and hobbyists

http://www.bitsum.com/pec2.asp

RegShot didn't show any registry changes attributable to PECompact2.

[Andrew Lee]

I have posted UPX Tool to the database. Thanks!

[Andrew Lee]

I have posted UPXShell to the database. Thanks!

[Andrew Lee]

PECompact2 stores the default settings to the registry. Monitor the registry before and after you change the default settings and you can find out which entries it writes.

[Slythfox]

This thread just gave me serious modivation to make my UPX Mass Compress program public. I was considering doing so just yesterday, but I decided it wouldn't be worth the effort, until I realised I probably should because it would be useful for some people.

UPX Mass Compress is a simple program that quicky compresses a batch of dll or exe files. This program has saved me a lot of time for the two portable applications I maintain, especially with all the dll files in Portable Scribus.

Here's more info on it, including the download link. I hope this is useful to someone.
http://www.quate.net/newsnet/read.php?id=44

[SMarmotte]

I've released a new version of the UPX Shell.

You can get it here: http://membres.lycos.fr/smarmotte/downloads/

Don't forget to change language to ENGLISH if you don't understand FRENCH.

[Onesimus Prime]

Slythfox's given link for UPX Mass Compress results in a "MySQL" error when trying to download the actual file. I did manage to get a copy from the Internet Archive cache of the page, located at the following address as of today (Nov. 19th, 2007): web.archive.org/web/20071120041123re_/http://www.quate.net/newsnet/read.php?id=44

The actual download link is: web.archive.org/web/20071120041123/http://www.quate.net/archive/projects/l ... r.php?i=14

(I intentionally didn't make those as clickable links. Noobie question: isn't such linking sometimes frowned upon/discouraged? How can one tell when this is the case?)

[Queue]

I'm just now seeing this thread due to Onesimus Prime's posts, but two posts up SMarmotte linked to their own webpage and they've got some fantastic utilities there! I'm gonna test them for portability later, but some of them have really caught my eye.

Queue

[Queue]

All of SMarmotte's utilities that I tested (AdminTest, Alarm, CPUSerial, IP2MAC, RegistryLier, and Process Cleaner) worked splendidly and didn't write settings to the registry. Only Process Cleaner even wrote settings to an INI file (in the folder that its EXE is located).

It's useful software and there's even source code available for some of it. If you read this SMarmotte, please add commandline support for RegistryLier so an executable can be passed to it via a batch file or shortcut; that'd make that utility fantastic (it's already really great though).

Queue

Edit - RegistryLier seems to use a generic shared MRU (most recently used) file list in the registry. This shouldn't disqualify it as portable though.