PECompact 3.03.23 Beta

3.2 out of 5 stars 3.2 (204 votes)

BETA (November 29, 2011)

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, Windows (All) / Shareware; $89.95 / 12,418 downloads

PECompact is one of the most well established Windows executable compressors on the market. It compressed Win32 PE modules (i.e. EXE, DLL, SCR, OCX), including some that host .NET assemblies. Its power lies in its extensibility, allowing any number of CODEC plug-ins, API Hook Plug-ins, and Loader plug-ins. By working with anti-virus and anti-malware companies, we help avoid false alarms and deter abuse by malware authors. Many prominent software companies currently use PECompact on their products, further helping to shield our users against false alarms. Best of all, PECompact is kept up to date and fully supports Windows Vista and Windows 7 PE features. PECompact does NOT, however, yet support 64-bit PE+ modules.

The primary functionality of PECompact lies in a console mode application, but a fully featured and robust GUI is also provided. PECompact has been translated into several languages. If yours is one of them, it will be presented to you upon install.

Reviews of PECompact

  1. 1 out of 5 stars
    YoungOldies

    Reviewing 3.03.12 Beta (Nov 22, 2010)

    The eternal mask of darkness.

  2. 5 out of 5 stars
    jcollake

    Reviewing 3.02.2 (May 20, 2010)

    If you will download Google Desktop, you will see its installer is compressed with PECompact. I think that sums up the following defense against the 'only used by malware' comment.

    My customers are NOT malware authors, they are software development companies.. from big name corporations to sole proprietorships. I try my best to deter malware abuse by working with anti-virus/anti-malware companies to help scan inside PECompact compressed executables. So, 'by something to hide', you should include intellectual property or copy protection mechanisms... NOT just malicious code.

    Also, CPU cycles are more abdundent than disk and network I/O in many cases. If you have a 20MB executable, its nice if only 5MB needs to be loaded from the disk or network.

    Well, there are always negative people.. I just want to say that with PECompact I do my best to ensure it is not abused by malware authors. Such abuse causes everyone headaches. I screen my customers, removed the free build, etc..

    Are your criticisms valid? Well, sure.. The world isn't so black and white though. What may make no sense, or have no use to YOU, does make sense, or have use to someone else (other than malware authors).

  3. 1 out of 5 stars
    ChipChop

    Reviewing 3.02.2 (May 5, 2010)

    Only malware writers use this kinda crap.
    Who wants to use more CPU cycles in favor of a couple of kBytes of harddisk space ? Noone, except those trying to hide their shady code.

  4. 1 out of 5 stars
    dhry

    Reviewing 3.00.2 (Jul 29, 2009)

    Back when people used floppy disks this might have been useful. Nowadays, it's completely pointless. You can usually ZIP or RAR an executable smaller when packaging it up if it ISN'T precompressed. Exe compression does nothing to help the end user - it uses more RAM initially to decompress, takes longer to scan for a virus (obviously exponentially increased if you compact a lot of executables), isn't practical if you're already using NTFS compression, aids the spread of viruses as previously mentioned (if your viruskiller doesn't support a particular UPX or PECompact version, or doesn't support decompression at all, you're SOL). The cons of performing this action on exes FAR outweigh the pros.

  5. 5 out of 5 stars
    Pembo

    Reviewing 2.76 Beta A (Feb 6, 2006)

    A very tasty .exe & .dll compressor. Been using it for years now, aswell as UPX (Ultimate Packer for Executables).
    Oh, by the way sn0wflake, viruses can not hide within compressed modules because most major anti-virus softwares support scanning inside the PECompact's modules!
    ...Anyway, hot product.

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