The Smallest Possible EXE and related files

The smallest runnable EXE on 64-bit Windows is 268 bytes, this is a limitation with the Windows operating system, and not the Portable Executable file itself. An example of a 268 byte PE file can be found within the 268B folder of this repository.

268.asm can be compiled using the Netwide Assembler using the following command:

nasm -f bin -o 268.exe 268.asm

The assembled program can be run as normal, either by double clicking the icon of the 268.exe file, or by using the following command in the Windows Command Prompt:

268.exe

If there was no large blue box stating that "This app can't run on your PC" then it was executed correctly (this program has no visual output).

Doomsday - A small Console Game

Press Enter to start or restart

To compile with MASM:

ml doomsday.asm /link /NOLOGO /NODEFAULTLIB /SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE /ENTRY:START /MERGE:.rdata=. /MERGE:.pdata=. /MERGE:.text=. /SECTION:.,ER /ALIGN:16 kernel32.lib Advapi32.lib

To compile with Crinkler it requires two steps, as Crinkler takes the place of the standard Microsoft Linker. First Assemble using MASM, but only create the object file, using the /c flag. Then create the compressed EXE using crinkler.exe.

ml /c /coff doomsday.asm
crinkler.exe /NODEFAULTLIB /ENTRY:START /SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE /TINYHEADER /NOINITIALIZERS /UNSAFEIMPORT /ORDERTRIES:1000 /TINYIMPORT kernel32.lib Advapi32.lib doomsday.obj

Note: these compressed programs created by Crinkler may trigger your anti-virus software, that's normal.

Small Piano - World's Smallest Piano App

To compile with MASM:

ml piano.asm /link /NOLOGO /NODEFAULTLIB /SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE /ENTRY:START /MERGE:.rdata=. /MERGE:.pdata=. /MERGE:.text=. /SECTION:.,ER /ALIGN:16 kernel32.lib

To compile with Crinkler it requires two steps, as Crinkler takes the place of the standard Microsoft Linker. First Assemble using MASM, but only create the object file, using the /c flag. Then create the compressed EXE using crinkler.exe.

ml /c /coff pian.asm
crinkler.exe /NODEFAULTLIB /ENTRY:START /SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE /TINYHEADER /NOINITIALIZERS /UNSAFEIMPORT /ORDERTRIES:1000 /TINYIMPORT kernel32.lib piano.obj

The Piano has 8 keys, ranging from C to C the notes of the Piano correspond to the following keyboard keys:

|Z|X|C|V|B|N|M|L|
|C|D|E|F|G|A|B|C|

The scale of the piano can be shifted up or down an octave by a single press of the up or down keys. There is no audio or visual feedback for this change. The initial frequencies of each note are found in the SCALE variable in the data section, this is bit shifted to the left equivlent to the value in the SHIFT variable, which is initialized to 4.

Scanning the QR codes

The programs can be decoded from their relevant QR codes through zbarimg

zbarimg --oneshot -Sbinary --raw QR.png > out.exe