3 ms·
That's because it's treating it as a 16-bit DOS executable (since it has the 'MZ' magic number but not the rest of the PE header that tells Windows that it's 32
by JonathonW 10y ago
That's because it's treating it as a 16-bit DOS executable (since it has the 'MZ' magic number but not the rest of the PE header that tells Windows that it's 32 or 64-bit). 64-bit Windows can't run 16-bit executables at all.
32-bit Windows should fail a little later in the execution process; it can run 16-bit software, but your text file is missing the rest of the MZ-format header.