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How to edit an application.exe

I believe a software that has an extenstion .exe was created in Visual Basic. I am not sure if it was created in VB 5.0, 6.0, .NET, or Visual Studio. How can I upload an .exe file inside of Visual Basic. 5.0, or .NET and make modifications to the software?
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gregwestmoreland
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Any help would be appreciated. :)
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Mike Tomlinson
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Then how do I modify a software pack into a programming language?
Hi gregwestmoreland;

You will need the source code, the text version of the program to be able to make modifications.

As Idle_Mind pointed out if you only have the exe file you will need to decompile the exe file into a text version if one exist for the source language that was used to compile the original exe file.

Fernando
If you give us more SPECIFIC information about your situation then we can probably tell you whether or nor what you want can be achieved.  There is always the possibility that we can't determine the original language or that we actually can't help you further due to EE policies.
I began working for a very small company 3 months ago. The company has a database driven program that allows private schools to keep records of grades and information for their students. The original software developer has since left the company and we are looking to do an update on the software. My department supervisor asked me to look and see which language it was written in so we can make an update on the work that was already done. We would not be breaking the EULA because our company owns the EULA. That is the situation.

Also, do I decompile the .exe file with a special software? I have very limited programming code. If I can find out which language it was written in, I can modify the look of the software and work on an update for my company. Thanks for all input so far.
Have you started your investigation "low tech" at all?  How long ago did the person leave?  Is the computer they worked at still in the office?  If so, what development environments are installed on it?  In the software, are there any Help --> About screens?  Can you determine if there are any external files being used?  Is there an obvious file that is the database part of the app?  If so, what is its extension? etc...
It has been about a year since that person left, and no I do not have access to the computer they created the program under. It uses MS Access database files and reports to save the information to. Extension .mdb