Hi All - I've recently been disassembling some software written by idiots who never heard of operating systems other than messy-windows, so that I can re-implement it on my favorite platform (and fix numerous bugs). I know many of you have done work in this area so maybe you can give me a few tips. I ran the program and traced its execution, which quickly showed what parts were significant, and it's pretty easy to figure out what the relevant functions are and what they do. I was able to recompile sections of the code into my own program and make it work without too much difficulty. What is bugging me is this: The program contains huge amounts of 'junk code' such as the following (disassembled with gdb): movl 0x7c58c,%eax movl %eax,0xffffffa8(%ebp) movl 0xffffffa8(%ebp),%eax movl %eax,0x7c590 movl 0x7c590,%eax movl %eax,0xffffffa8(%ebp) movl 0xffffffa8(%ebp),%edx This segment of code accomplishes nothing execpt to move the same value around into different locations, which are never again read. At least half of the instructions consist of similiar garbage, writing data into locations that are never read, duplicating constants, copying values that are never used, and so on. The only thing saving the program from running out of memory is that the programmer mostly used static buffers, only sparingly doing dynamic allocation. I'm quite surprised that I haven't found any buffer overruns or security holes yet. So, does anyone have reccomendations of what is the best way to seperate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak? I can use the program as is, but the sheer amount of junk tends to make it run slowly, so I'd much prefer to completely rewrite it.