windres cannot reverse-compile version information?

[Lavrentiev, Anton (NIH/NLM/NCBI) [C]]

Hi,

I'm trying to use windres under Cygwin (binutils 2.22.51),
and while it does not give me a single warning when compiling
an .rc file (the linker then does not mind the resultant object file,
either), neither the .o file nor the .exe cannot be read back
with windres, giving me this:

windres: version string: not enough binary data

I also tried to use windres on some standard Windows dlls/exes,
and on every invocation I got:

windres /cygdrive/c/windows/system32/ntdll.dll
windres: unexpected version string length 68 != 32 + 8

windres /cygdrive/c/windows/sysWOW64/kernel32.dll
windres: unexpected version string length 68 != 32 + 8

windres /cygdrive/c/windows/winhlp32.exe
windres: unexpected version string length 68 != 32 + 8

What I am doing wrong?

TIA,

Anton Lavrentiev
Contractor NIH/NLM/NCBI