I have a client/server app which I have been developing on a single PC. Now it needs two serial ports, so I borrowed a PC from a friend.
When I build my app and try to run or debug it (whether in the Delphi IDE or from Windows File manager), it errors "The application was unable to start correctly (0xc000007b)".
Googling doesn't bring up much, but seems to indicate that this is nothing Delphi specific and happens with other apps. It seems to be caused by calling into a 32 bit DLL from a 64 bit app or vice versa.
both PCs are Windows 7, 64 bit
both have Delphi Xe2 starter edition which can only handle 32 bits
The app runs fine on my PC, but not on my friend's
Other Delphi apps run just fine on both PCs
Can anyone give me a hint as to how to track this down?
Normally we get the 0xC000007B error-code (which means STATUS_INVALID_IMAGE_FORMAT), if:
If a 32-bit app tried to load a 64-bit DLL.
Or if a 64-bit app tried to load a 32-bit DLL.
Or if a 64-bit app tried to run on a 32-bit Windows.
To really know, I would suggest to test whether there is a problem between your application and its dependencies using dependency walker
Note that all you need to do is open your App using said tool, and issues appear as red log-entries at buttom of screen.
(At least, at time of writting, namely 2022)
Also, make sure you run the correct version of Dependency Walker, for example, the x86 version will display incorrect results when openning x64 binaries.
A load time dependency could not be resolved. The easiest way to debug this is to use Dependency Walker. Use the Profile option to get diagnostics output of the load process. This will identify the point of failure and should guide you to a solution.
The most common cause of this error is trying to load a 64 bit DLL into a 32 bit process, or vice versa.
I tried all the things specified here and found yet another answer. I had to compile my application with 32-bit DLLs. I had built the libraries both in 32-bit and 64-bit but had my PATH set to 64-bit libraries. After I recompiled my application (with a number of changes in my code as well) I got this dreaded error and struggled for two days. Finally, after trying a number of other things, I changed my PATH to have the 32-bit DLLs before the 64-bit DLLs (they have the same names). And it worked. I am just adding it here for completeness.
It is a missing dll.
Possibly, your dll that works with com ports have an unresolved dll dependence.
You can use dependency walker and windows debugger. Check all of the mfc library, for example. Also, you can use nrCommlib - it is great components to work with com ports.
It has been mentioned in earlier answers that using dependency walker is the way to go, in my case (my application keeps failing with the error code), dependency walker showed a few dll that are NOT relevant!
Finally figured out that I can run profiling by going to "profile" menu and it will run the application and stop at the exact dll that's cause the problem! I found out a 32bit dll was picked because of path and fixed it.
I experienced the same problem developing a client-server app using Microsoft Visual Studio 2012.
If you used Visual Studio to develop the app, you must make sure the new (i.e. the computer that the software was not developed on) has the appropriate Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package. By appropriate, you need the right year and bit version (i.e. x86 for 32 bit and x64 for 64 bit) of the Visual C++ Redistributable Package.
The Visual C++ Redistributable Packages install run-time components that are required to run C++ applications built using Visual Studio.
Here is a link to the Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015 .
You can check what versions are installed by going to Control Panel -> Programs -> Programs and Features.
Here's how I got this error and fixed it:
1) I developed a 32 bit application using Visual Studio 2012 on my computer.
Let's call my computer ComputerA.
2) I installed the .exe and the related files on a different computer we'll call ComputerB.
3) On ComputerB, I ran the .exe and got the error message.
4) On ComputerB, I looked at the Programs and Features and didn't see Visual C++ 2012 Redistributable (x64).
5) On ComputerB, I googled for Visual C++ 2012 Redistributable and selected and installed the x64 version.
6) On ComputerB, I ran the .exe on ComputerB and did not receive the error message.
I recently had an issue where I was developing an application (that used a serial port) and it worked on all the machines I tested it on but a few people were getting this error.
It turns out all the machines that the error happened on were running Win7 x64 and had NEVER ONCE been updated.
Running a Windows update fixed all of the machines in my particular case.
Actually this error indicates to an invalid image format. However, why this is happening and what the error code usually means? Actually this could be appear when you are trying to run a program that is made for or intended to work with a 64 bit Windows operating system, but your computer is running on 32 bit Operating system.
Possible Reasons:
Microsoft Visual C++
Need to restart
DirectX
.NET Framework
Need to Re-Install
Need to Run the application as an administrator
Source: http://www.solveinweb.com/solved-the-application-was-unable-to-start-correctly-0xc000007b-click-ok-to-close-the-application/
This may be a case where debugging the debugger might be useful. Essentially if you follow the instructions here you can run two ide's and one will debug into the other. If you un your application in one, you can sometimes catch errors that you otherwise miss. Its worth a try.
I have seen the error trying to run VC++ debug executable on a machine which did not have Visual C++ installed. Building a release version and using that fixed it.
In my case the error occurred when I renamed a DLL after building it (using Visual Studio 2015), so that it fits the name expected by an executable, which depended on the DLL. After the renaming the list of exported symbols displayed by Dependency Walker was empty, and the said error message "The application was unable to start correctly" was displayed.
So it could be fixed by changing the output file name in the Visual Studio linker options.
You can have this if you are trying to manifest your application that it has a dependancy on the Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls assembly. You do this when you want to load Version 6 of the common controls library - so that visual styles are applied to common controls.
You probably followed Microsoft's original documentation way back from Windows XP days, and added the following to your application's manifest:
<!-- Dependancy on Common Controls version 6 -->
<dependency>
<dependentAssembly>
<assemblyIdentity
type="win32"
name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls"
version="6.0.0.0"
processorArchitecture="X86"
publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df"
language="*"/>
</dependentAssembly>
</dependency>
Windows XP is no longer the OS, and you're no longer a 32-bit application. In the intervening 17 years Microsoft updated their documentation; now it's time for you to update your manifest:
<!-- Dependancy on Common Controls version 6 -->
<dependency>
<dependentAssembly>
<assemblyIdentity
type="win32"
name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls"
version="6.0.0.0"
processorArchitecture="*"
publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df"
language="*"/>
</dependentAssembly>
</dependency>
Raymond Chen has a lovely history of the Common Controls:
The history of the Windows XP common controls (archive)
The main problem, of course, is that a DLL file is missing, or, even more likely, corrupt. If this is the case, then I have some pretty good ideas (especially if you've downloaded and installed a DLL manually!)...
TLDR: Delete every manually copy/pasted DLL you've done, uninstall old redistributable installs, and reinstall new redistributables for both 32-bit and 64-bit installs.
What To Do
This solution of copying/pasting missing DLL's into system32, etc., used to work since I can remember in the 1990's, but it doesn't seem to work anymore (2020). So if you run into this problem recently, I suggest:
Within windows\system32 and windows\SysWOW64, delete all files that match ms*.dll, that the operating system will allow you delete as admin.
Uninstall all Visual C++ Redistributables that you have with Windows. This prevents the "You already have this!" dialogue showing up upon reinstall, as detailed in the next step when we re-install.
Reinstall the 2015-2019 Visual C++ Redistributable from a regularly available download site. If this does not work, download and install the others, but personally, the 2015-2019 covered everything for me. Regardless of your machine, install both x32 and x64 packages! (All Download Links: Collected VC++ Download Links; MSVCR120.dll Fix; MFC140U.dll Fix.)
How You Know It's Working
There's a lot of variation in coders experiencing this, so, the idea that there's one single, possible solution is often discarded, but let's be positive!
If deleting the matching ms*.dll files worked, then you will no longer get an error about error code 0xc000007b. Instead, you'll get a message about a missing .dll. This tells you that you're hitting the right code path!
If installing the redistributable works, then certain popular, DLL files should appear in the above-mentioned system32 and SysWO64 folders. For instance: MSVCR120.dll, MSVCR140.dll, MSVCR100.dll, MSVCP100.dll, MSVCP120.dll, MSVCP140.dll, and friends.
Last, Possible Best Chances
Sometimes things don't work according to plan (as we all in the Windows world know). You can also try the following!
Open the "Turn Windows Features on or off" tab in Windows (supported in Windows 8-10). Uncheck the .NET Framework installations. You'll see a small installation go by.
Restart the system. Go to the above feature again, recheck .NET Framework, and click "okay". If this works, you'll see a "installing and updating .NET framework" message that takes maybe a minute or so to go by. Once this is done, I recommend a reboot again.
Good luck!
Just solved this problem for my personal project (thanks to Dries for that). For me it was because the project path was too long. After saving the .sln to a shorter path (C:/MyProjects) and compiling from there it ran without the error.
Also download and unzip "Dependencies" into same folder where you put the wget.exe from
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/wget.htm
You will then have some lib*.dll files as well as wget.exe in the same folder and it should work fine.
(I also answered here https://superuser.com/a/873531/146668 which I originally found.)
I just ran into this issue. I searched for "C++" under my "Apps & Features" in Windows 10 control panel and noticed that some kind of update had just run a few days prior and installed VC++ Redistributable 2012-2017. The app that was running into the error message only required VC++ 2010. I uninstalled all of them and then reinstalled just 2010 x86/x64, and the error went away and the application functioned as expected.
That can happen if for some reason a x86 resource is loaded from a x64 machine. To avoid that explicitly, add this preprocessor directive to stdafx.h (of course, in my example the problematic resource is Windows Common Controls DLL.
#if defined(_WIN64)
#pragma comment(linker, "\"/manifestdependency:type='win32' name='Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls' version='6.0.0.0' processorArchitecture='amd64' publicKeyToken='6595b64144ccf1df'\"")
#endif
It is possible that you have multiple versions of the dll(s) on your system. You can search your system to find out. The issue may be solved by simply changing the order of the directories in your path. This was my issue. (Cannot run Qt Creator GUI outside of Qt. "The application was unable to start correctly (0xc000007b)" error)
I ran into this issue when fetching code from my repository and compiling on a new machine. Copying over the entire repository and then compiling resulted in an executable which worked. Turns out a 32bit DLL accidentally wasn't checked in. As the people above state, use "Dependency Walker" to figure out where it goes wrong.
To make it more clear what to look for see the below screenshot, with in the background the exe trying to load the wrong DLL (notice the '64') resulting in "the application was unable to start correctly 0xc00007b" and in the foreground the exe which was simply copied over (which included the correct DLL).
I came here when I was searching for: "golang Windows (0xc00007b)"
I have an app written in Golang, which uses iconv. It worked on my machine, but not in someone else's machine.
The first error was the missing DLL: libiconv-2.dll, so I guess they downloaded it on the internet but it was the 32 bit and not 64 bit version, so the 0xc00007b error appeared.
I searched the DLL on my system but I did not have success until I searched on MinGW 64 path which in my case is: C:\msys64\mingw64\bin
The solution was to distribute the DLL with the .exe, which was in the MinGW folder.
I'm writing a project in C++ with SDL2 on 64-bit Windows 10 using Visual Studio 2015. I recently purchased a new Windows 10 laptop and cloned my project from github. My project compiles correctly, but I get the following error when I run it:
The application was unable to start correctly (0xc000007b). Click OK to close the application.
Based on my research so far, this error is usually caused by loading an incompatible DLL, e.g. a 64-bit version instead of 32-bit. Suggestions I've found so far include:
Checking that I'm using the 32-bit versions of the SDL2 DLLs
Installing/reinstalling the x86 version of the Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015
Using Dependency Walker to troubleshoot which DLL is failing
My project is set to build for Win32, and I've ensured that I'm using the 32-bit versions of all DLLs I'm explicitly linking (libfreetype-6, libpng16-16, SDL2, SDL2_image, SDL2_mixer, and SDL2_ttf). I have confirmed that the x86 VC++ Redistributable is installed on my machine.
Finally, I've attempted to use Dependency Walker to determine what DLL might be causing the problem (although I've read caveats that Dependency Walker has a lot of false positives). These were the results:
Dependency Walker static analysis
Dependency Walker profiling results
After that point, the profiler freezes and never continues. Note that the SDL components and the VC runtime are loading without error.
The program compiles and loads correctly on my two older machines, one running 32-bit Windows 7 and one running 64-bit Windows 10.
Now for the actual question. What other steps can I take to debug this crash? Or does anyone see from the information I've provided what I'm doing wrong?
Related questions:
The application was unable to start correctly (0xc000007b)
Win 7, 64 bit, dll problems
Using SDL_image in Visual studio 2010, with error "application was unable to start correctly 0xc000007b"
Edit:
As rflobao suggested, I was using the 64-bit version of Dependency Walker on a 32-bit exe. Here is the new output of my profiling run:
At this point, as before, Dependency Walker freezes. I'm still totally lost and don't feel like I'm any closer to being able to determine what's causing the problem.
Note that Dependency Walker has 32 and 64 bit version. If your application is 32-bit you should use the 32 bit version. Otherwise the Dependency Walker will see the libs to System32 and not SisWOW64.
You image show 32bit and 64bit libs mixed, where 64 has error.
This is by no means completely reliable, but you can give it a try. It requires dumpbin.exe, which is included with Visual Studio.
First, get a list of dependent DLLs for your program, resolved against your path:
del dlls.txt
for /f %d in ('dumpbin /dependents Questless.exe ^| findstr /ic:".dll"') do #echo %~$PATH:d >> dlls.txt
Then get the bitness of each:
for /f "delims=" %d in (dlls.txt) do #echo %d & dumpbin /headers "%d" | findstr /c:"machine (x"
This will produce output like:
C:\Windows\System32\kernel32.dll
8664 machine (x64)
C:\programs\ed23\bin\hydra.dll
14C machine (x86)
Note that this is incorrectly using the kernel32.dll from System32, rather than the WOW6432 one, so it shows that as x64. That's because it just used the path, when the Windows loader will actually use the WOW6432 mapper, SxS, the application manifest, and only fall back on the path if none of those resolve the dependency. It also doesn't find dependents of dependents (you could script recursing through the dependents, but be sure to filter out duplicates), and of course doesn't know anything about run-time explicit dynamic loads.
Nevertheless, it's a quick way to get a short list to check, and might identify your problem.
I feel profoundly dumb, but I finally figured out the real problem. I'm using the SDL font library SDL2_ttf, and I simply hadn't copied zlib.dll from the SDL2_ttf lib directory into my build directory. I don't understand why the error message was so cryptic; in the past missing DLLs have given me a helpful "foo.dll is missing" error message.
Anyway, thank you all for your help. At least I've learned a useful lesson: always make sure all the required DLLs are present before suspecting a more complex problem.
I'm using Visual Studio 2015, and trying to compile a C++ code in Release mode, x86. My operating system is Windows 10, 64-bit OS and x64-based processor.
After it builds, if I run the .exe file from my laptop, it works perfectly fine. However, if I transfer everything in the Release folder to another computer (Windows 8) - no Visual Studio - along with two DLL files (pthreadVC2.dll and ucrtbased.dll), it gives me error 0xc000007b: the application was unable to start.
I've tried statically linking the libraries, but that didn't help. If I run the Dependency Walker, it says that the file - on my computer - has errors, and gives a log of what's wrong, which I cannot understand:
Error: At least one module has an unresolved import due to a missing
export function in an implicitly dependent module.
Error: Modules with different CPU types were found.
Warning: At least one delay-load dependency module was not found.
I looked around on this website, and apparently it means that 64-bit DLLs are being loaded and I should change that from Path. How do I do that? And why doesn't it work on the other computer, which has the same processor? I installed the Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015, but that did nothing.
Another question: The code uses many external headers. Do I have to export them to the other machine as well? Aren't they compiled as a LIB File?
I'm sorry if I sound clueless, but I rarely write applications using Visual Studio. Thanks for your help!
That error code is an NTSTATUS code, specifically STATUS_INVALID_IMAGE_FORMAT. That usually means that the loader is finding 64 bit modules rather than 32 bit modules. Exactly which modules are the wrong bitness is hard for us to tell. Running the startup under Dependency Walker's profile mode would reveal all.
You do really need to get a clear handle on what dependencies your program has. You have specific dependencies related to your program that go beyond the normal MSVC runtime dependency. Only you can know what your dependencies are. A tool like Dependency Walker can help you understand them, but make sure your understanding is solid. Try not to use trial and error to resolve this.
I have a simple application which reads a few text files does some calculations and writes a few text files. Works perfect on my development machine (Server2008R2 VC++ 2010). I can't get it to run on a Win7 machine even thought I have installed/run the vs2010 redistribute x86.
The first error I got was missing mfc100ud.dll (yes, I'm using debug, if I try the release it just crashes, as debug tells you what's wrong). I put mfc100ud.dll in the application's directory, now fgets asserts as shown below. str is not null and the file did open successfully.
What have I missed?
My goal here is to just run the MFC app on the Win7 machine without have to install vs2010.
Another consideration, the only reason I am using MFC is for the COleTimeDate functionality. I've looked for alternatives but haven' found anything workable or as simple to use.
Thanks.
Assertion Error
This error occures if the file stream pointer (provided by fopen) is NULL.
Is it possible that you don't have any error checking after you used fopen?
Basically use "static linking" to the MFC and CRT. Than there is no Need to install and copy any runtime files.
Redistributable assemblies are only available for release builds. If you really want to distribute a debug build, you have two options:
link your app statically, so you don't need any shared DLL (such as mfc100ud.dll)
distribute together with your app (in your app folder) all the dependent DLLs. you can check the dependencies with depends.exe
I am running a Qt C++ Project in Visual Studio 2008 and I got this error message:
"The program can't start because QtCored.dll is missing from your computer. Try installing the program to fix this problem".
Then I copy: QtCored4.dll from C:\Qt\4.8.0\bin to the exe program
I run it again, I got:
"The program can't start because QtGuid4.dll is missing from your computer. Try installing the program to fix this problem".
Then I copy: QtGuid4.dll from C:\Qt\4.8.0\bin to the exe program
Then I run it again, I got:
"the application was unable to start correctly (0xc015002). Click OK to close the program.
Then I check the Event Viewer, I see this:
Activation context generation failed for "D:\rest\rrpT.exe". Dependent
Assembly
Microsoft.VC80.DebugCRT,processorArchitecture="x86",publicKeyToken="1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b",type="win32",version="8.0.50727.762"
could not be found. Please use sxstrace.exe for detailed diagnosis.
First of all, it is very strange to me because I am building and debugging the application on VS2008 but it asks for the dll files form VS2005. Then I copied those files from VS2005:
msvcm80d.dll - msvcp80d.dll - msvcr80d.dll
to the program folder but it is still the same error :(
And I think there is also something interesting:
Activation context generation failed for "C:\Bin\QtSolutions_PropertyBrowser-2.5d.dll". Dependent Assembly Microsoft.VC80.DebugCRT,processorArchitecture="x86",publicKeyToken="1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b",type="win32",version="8.0.50727.762" could not be found. Please use sxstrace.exe for detailed diagnosis.
why is that PropertyBrowser is dependent on VS2005?
Any idea?
It sounds like your copy of Qt was compiled with VS2005, thus it probably has a dependency on the version 8 runtime DLLs. But your application is built with VS2008 and thus has a dependency on the version 9 runtime DLLs. In general, you can't get both versions of the runtime DLLs into one process. VC++ tends to break binary compatibility between major versions.
You need to recompile your own copies of the Qt DLLs with VS2008 or develop your application with VS2005.