How to open a .dll as an exe?

Question

I just downloaded an application. It came in a zip. I opened it with winrar and i founf a .dll file. I opened it in notepad and it came out as a bunch of symbols and rectangles. How can i make it so its an exe?

Answer 1

If you know the entry point , you ca use program RUNDLL to execute it. No need to convert.

Answer 2

Check out depends (Dependency Walker). It's great for this.



It not only identifies what the DLL relies upon (ie if you have a problem loading a program and it specifies an invalid DLL or missing reference, this program lets you figure out what you are missing... visual C++, .net, etc).

But it also allows you to view the native assembly Exports. This means you can call the functions of the DLL after loading it using their exported address. Very easy.

The only hard part is knowing a.) What the functions do, and b.) How to use them.

And for that, you are best using a debugger like OllyDbg to load the assembly, and step through a function's execution.



All of the above answers are good as well. I just wanted to tell you about Depends, because it's incredibly useful, and not many know about it.

Answer 3

DLL's are usually an interface. don't change anything in notepad and then save, it will corrupt it! you will need to delete and re-extract.

it's not an application. might be a driver or add-on feature to something that you may ave to manually put in place to make it work. you have also have to do from a cmd shell, regsvr32 something.dll to register it if it's an activex control.

sound like it didn't come with any installation instructions. you usually put something like this in your PATH (an environment variable).

if it's malicious, or questionable, avoid.

Answer 4

DLLs generally contain executable code, but they cannot be executed without a host process. You need to find out what specific exe should be used to make use of the DLL you downloaded.

Answer 5

You don't. It isn't an exe and it can't run as an exe. What you do is write your ownexe that calls into the dll.

Answer 6

You can't. A dll is not a program, so you can't start it. It's impossibile.