lld-link: error: section larger than 4 GiB: .data

[PaulG1]

I have been using INTEL fortran since 2018.  Parallel Studio.  Making EXE and DLL.

With the changing to Windows 11 we have decided to updated a lot of the software including the INTEL Fortran.

I just got this updated version, September of 2025, and grabbed some F90 files from an older project and was able to successfully make an EXE after going through and verifying the project settings.

This is a different computer that is windows 11 already and with visual studio 2019.

After looking through the menu of too many selections for making a DLL I was able to get one that looked very similar to how it looked for the 2018 parallel studio and then I used the same files as for the EXE except for the replacement file for the MAIN that was historically used for the DLL.....that always WORKED with 2018 Parallel Studio.

After verifying the settings in the DLL as was done with the EXE I tried to compile and have gotten the error in the subject line.

Can someone tell me, if it is known, how to fix this error such that I can achieve a compiled DLL that can be used?

What I struggle with is the constantly changing codes that appear, on the surface, to offer no tangible advantage to the developer or it is very possible, and maybe likely, that I am just not aware.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I have seen some earlier posts on the same topic maybe even from people I know but I was not able to fully grasp what exactly was the fix.

Please help if you can do so.

Paul

[MarcGrodent]

I encountered a similar problem, although the error message is not the same as yours (see this discussion: https://community.intel.com/t5/Intel-Fortran-Compiler/Intel-oneapi-2025-0-quot-Bad-image-quot-error-with-DLL-in-Visual/m-p/1716136#M177080 ). I suspect that both errors are due to the huge size of the .data section in the DLL; in my case, this size is about 3.4 GB which triggers a "Bad image" error when I run the executable. According to the Intel people, there can be several reasons for this problem. The good news is that the next Update Release (2025.3.0) will probably fix the issue; this version is scheduled for release around November (see the discussion in my link). In the meantime, I use two "fixes": (1) I compile my application with the old IFORT compiler on Windows; (2) I run the application on Linux with the new IFX compiler (the memory management is different under linux and the application runs correctly, at least in my case).