[According to the developer of Resource Hacker][1], this product is discontinued (and hasn't been updated since Sep 2011):

> I have been overwhelmed by the interest in Resource HackerTM, the
> emails of thanks, encouragement and suggestions. It's been downloaded
> many millions of times. However, I've moved on to other things and
> have no plans to continue its development. Please don't ask for the
> source code, I'm not releasing it, nor is it for sale. Colin Wilson
> has written an open source Resource Editor which may interest those
> looking for source code. Otherwise, Anders Melander has also created
> another excellent Resource Editor which is still being developed.

While this is not a direct answer as to why Resource Hacker can't work with some PE files, you may follow the author's suggestion to try out the open-source [XN Resource Editor][2] or Anders Melander's [free Resource Editor][3].

If you can reproduce the same issues in Colin Wilson's open-source XN Resource Editor, it may be much easier to inspect (via Delphi's debugger) and find the root cause.


  [1]: http://www.angusj.com/resourcehacker/
  [2]: https://github.com/stefansundin/xn_resource_editor
  [3]: http://melander.dk/reseditor/