I have an application written in QT. Previously I was using Visual Studio 2012 and Qt 5.3.1 after which I recently upgraded to Visual Studio 2015 and QT 5.6. I would previously provide msvcp110 and msvcr110 as part of the installation (I know that wasn't the best practice but I got away with it).
After upgrading I had to now install VC++ 2015 because of the changes with VS 2015. I don't mind the changes and currently providing redist packages to be installed.
The problem I am facing is that, I do have to provide VC++ 2012 as well and recently running the software in Windows 8.1 Pro, I was asked to provide VC++ 2013 as well (never used VS2013 for compiling). The diagnosis was from dependency walker and google. Not only that, I had to install x86 and x64 of all the 3 versions of VC++ for the software to start (wouldn't even start to be honest).
Why do I need VC++ 2012 and 2013 when I now use only Visual Studio 2015?
How do I get rid of the other redist packages? Is it some code I have written which is dependent? If yes any chance I can find out?
Why do I need to provide both the 32 and 64 bit versions when I compile strictly in the 64 bit compiler?
Any way to diagnose without dependency walker? Can there be some logging when the application refuses to start at all?
Apologies for the long post, but any light here can restore my sanity.
Thanks in advance.
You are using DLLs linked to the older runtime. You can use Dependency Walker on your development machine to track this down, shouldn't need to install any tools on a customer machine for that.
Migrate all the files shipped with your application to a version built against VC++ 2015.
You didn't provide any details that could reveal the reason.
For DLLs other than the language runtime library, you can use delay-loading and then be able to trap failure to load the library. You can't effectively delay-load msvcr*.dll though. One option would be to create a very thin EXE that uses no support DLL at all (either use pure Win32 API, or statically link the runtime) which does nothing except install an error handler and then load your main program which is now in the form of a DLL. Loading your main program DLL should be done either using delay-load linking or LoadLibrary()+GetProcAddress() -- either one will allow catching errors. This main program DLL would be free to import the runtime DLLs as usual.
I'm building a pure Win32 program (no clr or any assembly) by VC 2012 (VC 2012 (VC11) as my compiler). It uses boost 1.58, wxWidget 3.0.2 series,gsl 1.8, jsoncpp, Open CV 2.4.10, etc... The development box is running Win7 64bits. I would like it to be a single executable and is able to run on both Win 7 32/64 so I built all of the above packages as libs myself by the same VC 2012. (thanks for cmake)...
It works fine on development box but not on a clean one that only installed VC redistribution packages. I got the error message box ask me to use the sxstrace and the message in event log has side-by-side error like below and I also tried the sxstrace and got similar error.
"D:\Release\xxxx.exe" 的啟用內容產生失敗。 找不到依存組合 Microsoft.VC90.DebugCRT,processorArchitecture="x86",publicKeyToken="1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b",type="win32",version="9.0.21022.8"。 請使用 sxstrace.exe 進行詳細的診斷。
I've been searching around. All and answers simply says I should use all release build for all libs. Yes, it's true if I didn't I couldn't have the single executable at first place. It won't be able to link. (I learned it by made lots of mistakes) I've tried both MD or MT build for my program (not mix them together. They are separated test.). Either of the mode works. The same error remains. I've also installed over lots of VC2008 9.0.21022, -.30729.17, -30729.4148, -30729.6161, VC 2010 10.0.40219, VC 2012 11.0.61030 (x86/x64)
I really don't understand. It's pure win32 release build made by VC 2012. How come it requires VC90 debug dll?
I'll really appreciated if someone can give me more precise advice about how to resolve or even determine where and what goes wrong with the code or the lib I build.
I will suggest that you use the following tool: Dependency walker.
By loading your executable on your PC (where it works) you should find out all the DLLs it uses and so discover any hidden dependencies in the (medium sized) library list on which your project depends (and in turn their dependencies).
This should help you point out DLLs that you have on your PC but not on freshly installed machines.
A pure Win32 release build should not depend on DEBUG CRT dlls, that's for sure. The only project setting to control that is basically that MT/MD ("Runtime Library") setting. You want MT.
I would guess that you have the Debug CRT dll referenced somewhere in the source code (e.g. one of the libraries requires it to be linked in for whatever reason, maybe because there is #define DEBUG or something, thus overriding project settings.
You could try searching #pragma comment(lib, ...bla-bla-bla...) in the source code.
It's resolved by myself. The project is about migrating a big legacy project. So there's a very small lib built by VC90 without source code. So be a detail person is the key to do this kind of job.
I'm creating COM object dll. When I brought it to WIN XP 32 bit macheen and tried to register, I got message:
LoadLibrary ... failed. The specified module could not be found.
When I look at it with dependency walker I found that there are missing 3 dll's:
ATL100.dll
MSVCR100D.DLL
DWMAPI.DLL
What are the ways of solving this problem? And I don't like that fact that when I install this COM dll to my customers I will also need to take missing dll's together.
You need to have the MS VC++ 2010 redistributable pack installed on the client machine.
You should also link your program against the release version of the redist pack and not distribute a debug version of the VC++ runtime (msvcr100d.dll) as its release counterpart is part of the VS2010 redistributable pack, as described here. The ATL100.dll is also part of that pack. MS has strict policies about which dll can be distributed with the application. A previous post about DWMAPI.DLL will help to sort out that problem.
I'm using Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition to create a resource only DLL.
The problem I'm facing is that running the application that makes use of the DLL
on another computer besides mine results in LoadLibrary() function failing with error code 14001.
Searching throught the internet it seems to be a dependecy problem of the computer
running the application lacking libraries of the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package.
My first step was to install the latest Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package but that didn't solved the problem.
Also I changed my project setting so the DLL compiles with static CRT linking assuming that
this way I will get rid the dependencies.
These options seem to be the workarounds for other people having the same issue.
Any idea in which direction to look is highly appreciated.
Thanks
==================================================================================
Thanks for your answers.
Both Dependency Walker and the event viewer indicated a side-by-side configuration
problem as I was missing a debug version library of the VC++ Redistributable Package.
I was careless and have compiled my DLL in debug mode, recompiling in release mode solved the problem.
Try to isolate missing library by Dependency Walker:
http://www.dependencywalker.com/
Just run your application on the second computer with this tool, it should tell you what library is missing. Be sure you are installing the right version of Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package; there are two of them, for VS 2008 with SP1 and without any SP...
Look in the eventviewer. Good chance there will be an error there from Windows SideBySide explaining which assembly is missing.
Likely it would be a VC CRT runtime which you will have to bundle with your dll.
(the VC redistributable is available here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=29)
I had the same issues but with Visual Studio 2013; a debugging set of DLL's which required a manifest. In my case Microsoft.DTfW.DHL.manifest and dbghelp.dll had to be added to the path (I used the exe directory).
My C(++) program, written and compiled using Visual C(++)/Visual Studio, runs fine on my own machine, but refuses to run on another machine. The error message I get is "This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem."
If you write a C++ program, it links dynamically to the C Runtime Library, or CRT for short. This library contains your printf, your malloc, your strtok, etcetera. The library is contained in the file called MSVCR80.DLL. This file is not by default installed on a Windows system, hence the application cannot run.
The solution? Either install the DLL on the target machine through VCREDIST.EXE (the Visual C++ Redistributable Package), or link to the CRT statically (plug the actual code for the used functions straight into your EXE).
Distributing and installing VCREDIST along with a simple application is a pain in the arse, so I went for the second option: static linking. It's really easy: go to your project's properties, unfold C/C++, click Code Generation, and set the Runtime Library to one of the non-DLL options. That's all there is to it.
The problem here is a missing DLL dependency, such as the CRT (C Runtime Library). A good tool for diagnosing this sort of problem is Dependency Walker (depends.exe), which you can find here:
http://www.dependencywalker.com/
You would run this program on the computer that generates the error message you posted, and use it to open the exe that's generating this error. Dependency Walker will quickly and graphically indicate any DLLs that are required but not available on the machine.
Chances are high that you miss the runtime libraries of Visual Studio (CRT amongst others), you can either get rid of those dependencies (link statically) or install the VC redist packages on the target computer.
Depending on the Visual C++ version you use, you have to install different packages :
Visual C++ 2005
Visual C++ 2005 SP1
Visual C++ 2008
Warning : those packages only contain release versions of the libraries, if you want to be able to distribute debug builds of your application you'll have to take care of the required DLL yourself.
It is much the simplest to link to the runtime statically.
c++ -> Code Generation -> Runtime Library and select "multi-threaded /MT"
However, this does make your executable a couple hundred KByte larger. This might be a problem if you are installing a large number of small programs, since each will be burdened by its very own copy of the runtime. The answer is to create an installer.
New project -> "setup and deployment" -> "setup project"
Load the output from your application projects ( defined using the DLL version of the runtime ) into the installer project and build it. The dependency on the runtime DLL will be noticed, included in the installer package, and neatly and unobtrusively installed in the correct place on the target machine.
The correct VC Redist package for you is part of your Visual Studio installation. For VC 8, you can find it here:
\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\vcredist_x86
POSSIBLE SOLUTION........
EDIT: (removed most of my post)
Long story short, I was having similar problems, getting the "Application Configuration Incorrect" messages, etc etc.
Depends.exe was only finding ieshims.dll and wer.dll as possible issues, but this is not the problem.
I ended up using the Multithreaded (/mt) compile option.
What HAS worked though, as a workable solution, is making an installer with InstallShield.
I've selected several merge modules in installshield builder and this seems to have fixed my problem. The modules selected were:
VC++ 9.0 CRT, VC++ 9.0 DEBUG CRT, and the CRT WinSXS MSM merge module.
I'm pretty sure its the WinSXS merge module that has fixed it.
DEBUG CRT: I noticed somewhere that (no matter how hard I tried, and obviously failed thus far), my Release version still depended on the DEBUG CRT. If this is still the case, the InstallShield merge module has now placed the DEBUG CRT folder in my WinSXS folder :) Being somewhat of a novice with VC++ I assume that this would normally be used to distribute debug versions of your programs to other people. To test if this is what fixed my problem I removed the DEBUG CRT folder from the WinSXS folder and the application still worked. (Unless something is still running in the background etc etc - I'm not that into it)
Anyway, this has got things working for me on an XP SP3 fully updated machine, and also on a VMWare XP SP3 machine with the bare bones (.net 3.5 and VC++ 2008 RTM basically) - and also on a mate's XP machine where it previously wasn't working.
So give these things a try, you might have some luck.
First thing you must use
#define _BIND_TO_CURRENT_VCLIBS_VERSION 1
or add _BIND_TO_CURRENT_VCLIBS_VERSION=1 to the preprocessor directives.
The problem is related to binding and the manifest types, you can find more http://www.nuonsoft.com/blog/2008/10/29/binding-to-the-most-recent-visual-studio-libraries/
By doing this your application will run with a larger range of runtime libraries versions.
Often times this error is the result of attempting to run the debug version of an application that uses .NET. Since the .NET redistributable package doesn't include the debug versions of the dlls that are installed with Visual Studio, your application will often get this error when running it on any other machine that doesn't have Visual Studio installed. If you haven't already, try building a release version of your application and see if that works.
Note also - that if you change to static runtime, you will have to do the same for MFC if your app uses MFC. Those settings are in properties->Configuration/General
I ran into this problem and was able to fix it very simply.
Visual studio gives you the option (on by default) to build a manifest for each build.
The manifest was put in the release folder, but it was a different release folder than the exe.
Even when using the setup utilities it was not packaged.
You should look for a file names something like myprogram.exe.indermediate.manifest
If this is in the same folder as the exe (and you have all the dlls) it should run