How to determine the target machine from a DLL?

Question

How can I determine the machine on which a given DLL can run. There are many platforms ARM, SH4, x64, x32. When I have no other information than the DLL itself how to do that?

Background: There is a set off DLLs and some of them are not appropriate. How to detect them "offline"?

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SOLUTION

Thanks for the help: the solution I use is the perl script

#!/usr/bin/perl 
# 
# usage: DllVer <exefile> 
# 
use strict;
use warnings;
use diagnostics;

my $exe = $ARGV[0]; 
my $doshdr; my $pehdr;
my %machines = (
    0x014c => "I386",
    0x0162 => "R3000",
    0x0166 => "R4000",
    0x0168 => "R10000",
    0x0169 => "WCEMIPSV2",
    0x0184 => "ALPHA",
    0x01a2 => "SH3",
    0x01a3 => "SH3DSP",
    0x01a4 => "SH3E",
    0x01a6 => "SH4",
    0x01c0 => "ARM",
    0x01c2 => "THUMB",
    0x01d3 => "AM33",
    0x01f0 => "POWERPC",
    0x01f1 => "POWERPCFP",
    0x0200 => "IA64",
    0x0266 => "MIPS16",
    0x0284 => "ALPHA64",
    0x0366 => "MIPSFPU",
    0x0466 => "MIPSFPU16",
    0x0520 => "TRICORE",
    0x8664 => "AMD64",
    0x9041 => "M32R",
    );

open(EXE, $exe) or die "can't open $exe: $!"; 
binmode(EXE); 
if (read(EXE, $doshdr, 68)) { 

   my ($magic,$skip,$offset)=unpack('a2a58l', $doshdr); 
   die("Not an executable") if ($magic ne 'MZ'); 

   seek(EXE, $offset, 0); 
   if (read(EXE, $pehdr, 6)){ 
       my ($sig,$skip,$machine)=unpack('a2a2v', $pehdr); 
       die("No a PE Executable") if ($sig ne 'PE'); 

       if (exists $machines{$machine}) {
           print $machines{$machine} . "\n";
       } 
       else{ 
            printf("Unknown machine type 0x%lx\n", $machine); 
       } 
   } 
} 

close(EXE); 

Answer 1

One way is to use the dumpbin utility:

C:\Windows\System32>dumpbin /headers kernel32.dll
Microsoft (R) COFF/PE Dumper Version 9.00.30729.01
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.


Dump of file kernel32.dll

PE signature found

File Type: DLL

FILE HEADER VALUES
             14C machine (x86)
               4 number of sections
        49E037DD time date stamp Sat Apr 11 08:25:33 2009
               0 file pointer to symbol table
               0 number of symbols
              E0 size of optional header
            2102 characteristics
                   Executable
                   32 bit word machine
                   DLL

OPTIONAL HEADER VALUES
             10B magic # (PE32)
            8.00 linker version
... etc ...

Answer 2

Try this perl script:

#!/usr/bin/perl 
# 
# usage: DllVer <exefile> 
# 
$exe = $ARGV[0]; 

open(EXE, $exe) or die "can't open $exe: $!"; 
binmode(EXE); 
if (read(EXE, $doshdr, 68)) { 

   ($magic,$skip,$offset)=unpack('a2a58l', $doshdr); 
   die("Not an executable") if ($magic ne 'MZ'); 

   seek(EXE,$offset,SEEK_SET); 
   if (read(EXE, $pehdr, 6)){ 
       ($sig,$skip,$machine)=unpack('a2a2v', $pehdr); 
       die("No a PE Executable") if ($sig ne 'PE'); 

       if ($machine == 0x014c){ 
            print "i386\n"; 
       } 
       elsif ($machine == 0x0200){ 
            print "IA64\n"; 
       } 
       elsif ($machine == 0x8664){ 
            print "AMD64\n"; 
       } 
       else{ 
            printf("Unknown machine type 0x%lx\n", $machine); 
       } 
   } 
} 

close(EXE);