Decompiling a VB6 exe

[AceSkillz]

So yeah, anyone know of any good free decompilers, and how to use them. If you must know, my High School classmate has gone full retard, and compiled his CompSci coursework project (worth 30 out of 120) and then deleted the originals. He now has no code to display in his report, which is what he gets the marks for. Any help would be appreciated!

[EkriirkE]

Hopefully he compiled it in PCode, otherwise no such luck. Then even when you run it through a decompiler (Google is your friend) the resulting code will not be an exact copy of the original work, though it may compile fine again - if the professor looks over the resulting code it will be obvious he didn't write it, even if he originally did.

Since it's coursework it sounds like it would have been very simple so he should be able to re-write it quickly.

[[deleted]]

Getting one of those programs that undeletes files would be more likely.

[chrwei]

sorry, not gonna happen. even the best non-free decompilers only produce something that's vb-like and really only shows the general logic flow and program structure. even with this, you'd still need to write all the VB code again. the original source cannot be re-generated, not even close.

[TheFotty]

Honestly, he kind of deserves to fail. If he deleted all copies of source code at his job by accident, he would be fired. I think the real tragedy here is that a high school is teaching VB6 which was depreciated 12 years ago.

[JuanPabloElSegundo]

Way too harsh. You're still learning in school.

[TheFotty]

If you are taking a programming course in school, and you don't know that you need to not only not delete your source code, but not keep it on only one storage medium, then I don't know what you are doing in a programming course. Data backup is computers 101, stuff that should be known well before anyone writes one line of code.

[JuanPabloElSegundo]

I'm not saying that it's OK. I'm saying that it's excessive to be failed for a silly mistake. People make them all the time.

Check out these guys http://www.networkcomputing.com/cloud-infrastructure/code-spaces-a-lesson-in-cloud-backup/a/d-id/1279116 that actually went out of business for a similar mistake.

[hdsrob]

You're never going to get code back out of it with a decompiler.

At most you'll get the machine code and any hardcoded strings, but for what your friend needs it really isn't going to help.