Technical problem with XP SP2 + VC++7 compiled files. (and PE packing)

[gigaman]

Is it really VC 7 (i.e. VS .NET 2002), or VC 7.1 actually (i.e. VS .NET 2003)?
VC 7.1 supports a new feature, called "safe exceptions" - some kind of protection against exception explots. It's not very documented (at least I didn't find any really useful info... anybody?), but it seems to use a list of "registered" exception handlers; if the exception handler is not registred, it cannot be called. The list of registered exception handlers seems to be stored in a special PE directory (IMAGE_DIRECTORY_ENTRY_LOAD_CONFIG?)... or maybe not stored, but somehow connected at least - so, if your packer corrupts it, it may cause the described troubles.
I think that until recently, it was supported by Windows 2003 server only - but XP SP2 may have it, too, don't know.

I didn't study it very thoroughly, so I may certainly be wrong on any part.