New Executable
The New Executable is a 16-bit executable file format, a successor to the DOS MZ executable format. It was used in Windows 1.0–3.x, Windows 9x, multitasking MS-DOS 4.0, OS/2 1.x, and the OS/2 subset of Windows NT up to version 5.0. An NE is also called a segmented executable. It utilizes the 286 protected mode or unreal mode, and it can be 16-bit and 32-bit hybrid.
History
The first product to be released using the New Executable format was Windows 1.0 in 1985, followed by the 1986 multitasking MS-DOS 4.0, which was a separate branch of MS-DOS development, released between mainstream MS-DOS versions 3.2 and 3.3, and sometimes referred to as "European MS-DOS 4.0".The Portable Executable format replaced NE format in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows, while Linear Executables replaced NE for 32-bit programs in OS/2. VxD in Windows 9x also use LE format.
Compatibility
While designed for 16-bit OSes, NE executables can be run on 32-bit Windows. Beginning with Windows Vista, icon resources inside New Executables are not extracted and shown even by the 32-bit shell. 64-bit versions of Windows completely lack native support for running NE executables, because 64-bit Windows cannot run 16-bit programs on the processor without the help of an emulator.Due to the rare and fairly complex nature of these files, only a few .EXE packers support it: WinLite, PackWin, PKLite 2.01, and SLR Optloader or NeLite for OS/2. The NE format is also still used as container for
.fon Microsoft Windows bitmapped fonts.