LINK: Renaming Overlayed Executables Will Cause Problems

ID Number: Q43139

5.01.21

DOS

Summary:

When the Microsoft linker creates an executable file with overlays,

the name of that EXE is hard coded into the file for use by the overlay

manager. The Microsoft linker only creates internal overlays, i.e.,

rather than producing FOO.EXE, FOO1.OVL, and FOO2.OVL, the two

overlays are contained in FOO.EXE.

If the executable is renamed at any point after linking, the overlay

manager will still use the hard-coded name found in the EXE to locate

the overlays, and will fail with the following prompt:

Cannot find <oldname>

Please enter new program spec:

In order to change the name of the executable without receiving this

error, it must be relinked and given the new name at that time.