View PE header - Olly 2.01

Many times we want to view the PE header to study certain fields. Its easy enough to do this with a million PE editors out there. You could even do it programatically - I use the pefile module in Python to do it. There's almost certainly others. But the point is... that I love Olly :). How can we do it in Olly?

Well, in Olly 1.10 you could go to the PE header location in the Dump section, right click and select Special - PE header. And this would perfectly parse the PE header and display it in the Dump. Or just go to View - Memory Map, right click and select Dumo.

But Olly 2.01 doesn't have this. The option seems to have changed. I had trouble finding it but finally managed. There is no Special -> PE header menu but a 'Decode as structure' menu.  Here are steps on how to view the PE header in Olly 2.01:

• View - Memory Map. Locate PE header for the exe. Get the address from here.
• Go to the Dump section of Olly. Ctrl+G - enter address.
• So you can right click on the start of the PE header (MZ)  - Decode as structure and in the Drop down box there select IMAGE_DOS_HEADER. Now you see just 1 section decoded.
• Scroll down a bit till you come to the PE header. Right click on the PE header (anywhere...but make sure its inside the PE header, not the DOS header - Decode as structure - IMAGE_FILE_HEADER.

And so on.. use all the different IMAGE_ structures to decode the entire header. Its a bit of a pain really, and I preferred the old way :( or maybe just use another tool - just not Olly 2.01 for this. Its good for other structures though..probably, as you might have guessed.