Side-by-Side assembly, windows 7, visual c++ - windows

Hey guys so I made a small program in visual c++ 2008 so that other people could use.
I sent the exe that was located in the debug folder of the project to my friends.
When they tried clicking it this is what they got:
The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log or use the command-line sxstrace.exe tool for more detail.
Does anyone know how I can fix this?
Maybe a build/compile option in Microsoft Visual Studios 2008/2010?
Or will they have to download something?

First step is to do a "Release" build. When you do a debug build your are linked to the Debug version of the CRT (C Runtime). Windows definitely does not come with the debug CRT (unless your friends install VS2008 also) and you are not allowed to redistribute the Debug CRT version.
Simply doing a release build may be enough. VS 2008 has been around long enough that your friends computers may already have the release version of the CRT.
If this does not work, point your friends to http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29 so they can download and install the files they need.
And if that is not enough, you may need to keep track of which service pack of VS 2008 you built with because that may affect which version of the CRT they must download and install.
Anyways, good luck. Hope this helps.

Related

Fixing the "MSVCP110D.dll is missing from your computer" issue

I am facing the following (fairly common) problem: I am running my program in Debug mode in VS2010 and/or VS2012, but at startup it crashes, saying:
The programme can't start because MSVCP100D.dll is missing from your
computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.
Now I found a number of possible solutions, but none of them work for me:
Compile with /MTd instead of /MDd: actually this does solve the problem, but I am not allowed to: my program is part of a bigger program, and /MD[d] is mandatory.
Install the VS 2010 Redistributable package: This doesn't work because I have VS 2012 installed, so this installer tells me: "A newer version of Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable has been detected on the machine."
Finding, dragging and dropping a version of MSVCP100D.dll into the correct directory: I am not dropping unknown DLLs into places where they might interfere with other things.
Last resort: reinstalling VS2010/VS2012: possible, but as it would also mean reinstalling lots of other packages and plugins I need, I'd like to avoid this if it's not absolutely necessary.
Are there any other options left?
The Visual Studio REDIST packages never deploy the DEBUG versions of the CRT files. This is by design.
With VS 2012 or later, the easiest way to deploy the DEUBG versions of the CRT is to install the "Remote Debugging Tools" package on your test machines.
For VS 2012, the latest Remote Debugging Tools package is here
For VS 2013, the latest Remote Debugging Tools package is here.
Another option is to just use application local deployment of the DLL (i.e. copy it into your app directory). Again this is only for testing purposes. For actual deployment of your application, you are required to use the non-debug versions of the CRT.
If this error is happening on your development machine, however, then you have other problems because with VS 2012 installed, you should have the VS 2012 DEBUG CRT on that machine.
UPDATE:: Sorry, I would have expected the debug CRT DLLs to be included in the remote debugging tools package along with the remote debugger bits and the Direct3D 11 Debug Device. Alas, it's not. See Preparing a Test Machine To Run a Debug Executable. You have to either use the MSMs in Program Files (x86) directory in \Common Files\Merge Modules or copy the DLL-side-by-side from Program Files (x86) directory in \Microsoft Visual Studio <version>\VC\redist\Debug_NonRedist\. The VS Team probably assumed you would have already been doing that, but I'll suggest to them to roll it into the remote tools package.
I had a similar issue (the project made in VS 2012 but I was running VS2013) and resolved it by:
Open the project (or the solution ) in VS2013(or the newer one)
Open Project menu and select "Retarget the project" option (it was the first option but after applying it, this option vanished).
Rebuild your solution.
I am new to openCV and C++ and had the same problem using openCV 2.4.10 with Visual Studio Express 2013 on a Windows 7, 32-bit platform. If I made a simple program without using OpenCV, the program ran but when I used OpenCV I got the missing DLL error.
This post made things clear:
I guess the problem I had was not with my Visual Studio but my OpenCV. The OpenCV was compiled on a version of visual studio which required MSVCP110.dll. I could have tried another version of OpenCV or compiled OpenCV again using VS2013 but I was short of time. Instead, I found the dll file elsewhere and placed it in my system32 folder (not sure if that's recommended). This fixed the problem. However as #slater mentioned, I won't recommend downloading the dll from external website due to security issues.
This is a debug runtime DLL. If (and ONLY if!) you just want to run the debug build of your own application on a system without Visual Studio installed, then you can find the missing DLLs in
C:\Windows\System32 (for 64-bit builds)
C:\Windows\SysWOW64 (for 32-bit builds)
Just keep copying DLLs until your executable will run.
If this is NOT what you are trying to do, refer to https://stackoverflow.com/a/27386721/2279059, which is the CORRECT, but less practical answer.
I had the same problem, I found out that the cause is that I used dll compiled with VS2012 in a VS2013 project. JUST downloaded the missing dll and put it in my linker path and wala: the program worked. I downloaded it from http://www.dll-files.com/.
Particulars: My program was working in in release mode but not in the debug mode as it says the MSVCP110D.dll is missing. My code was an opencv image processing program. I put the missing dll in opencv linker path in the VS2013 project options.

Windows 7, 64 bit, DLL problems

I have a problem with our executable. I'm running this C++ 32-bit executable on my Windows 7 64-bit development box that also has all those Microsoft applications (Visual Studio 2008 + 2010, TFS, SDK, Microsoft Office)...
And it's still running just fine.
Now I got the client installation of the very same program and was asked to test it with a clean Windows 7 installation. Thus I got one Windows 7 64-bit VMware and updated it to Windows 7 SP 1 (the very same version my developer box is tuning).
But while on my developer box everything is fine the program does not work with the VMware (30 days trial) box.
The x86 Dependency Walker is telling me that the following DLL files are missing:
API-MS-WIN-CORE-COM-L1-1-0.DLL
API-MS-WIN-CORE-WINRT-ERROR-L1-1-0.DLL
API-MS-WIN-CORE-WINRT-L1-1-0.DLL
API-MS-WIN-CORE-WINRT-ROBUFFER-L1-1-0.DLL
API-MS-WIN-CORE-WINRT-STRING-L1-1-0.DLL
API-MS-WIN-SHCORE-SCALING-L1-1-0.DLL
DCOMP.DLL
GPSVC.DLL
IESHIMS.DLL
I googled for those API-MS-WIN-... DLL files and found they should actually already be part of Windows 7 (some sites claiming the belong to Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 though).
I already tried the suggested fixes I found, which are:
running 'sfc /scannow'
installing Visual Studio 2008 SP1 runtime executables
But that didn't solve anything. :-(
Side note: My development box does not have them either, and does not seem to need them. For example, the user32.dll on my box does not link against one of those, while the installation on the VMware does.
Any idea on how to fix this issue?
I tried to find a suitable download / fix on the Microsoft pages, but I failed.
After solving my issue I wanted to report what I found out, and I can't post this as an answer because the question has been closed.
Actually all the DLL files reported missing by the Dependency Walker tool, namely those
* API-MS-WIN-CORE-...
type DLL files were not part of the actual problem.
In my case the registration of three OCX files was missing and after that everything was just fine, BUT Dependency Walker tool still listed all the very same DLL files as before even when the program was just running fine now.
The gist of it: As someone elsewhere stated, the tool is a bit dated by now and does not always work properly with a newer OS. Thus keep an eye open and don't get mislead by missing 'API-MS-WIN-CORE-COM-L1-1-0.DLL', ... the problem probably lies entirely elsewhere.
This problem is related to missing the Visual Studio "redistributable package." It is not obvious which one is missing based on the dependency walk, but I would try the one that corresponds with your compiler version first and see if things run properly:
Visual Studio 2015
Visual Studio 2013
Visual Studio 2010
Visual Studio 2008
I ran into this problem because I am using the Visual Studio compilers, but not the full Visual Studio environment.
Going to dare to inject a new link here: The latest supported Visual C++ downloads. Stein Åsmul, 29.11.2018.
I just resolved the same problem with C++ Qt 5 and Windows 7 64 bits with MSCVC 2012.
In the beginning I thought it was a MSVC/Windows DLL file problem, but as BorisP said, the problem was in my project dependencies. The key is "How to know your project dependencies in Qt 5?".
As I didn't find any clear way to know it (Dependency Walker didn't help me a lot...), I followed next the "inverse procedure" that takes no more than 5 minutes and avoid a lot of headaches with DLL file dependencies:
Compile your project and take the executable file to an empty folder: myproject.exe
Try to execute it, It will retrieve an error (missing DLL files...).
Now, copy all the DLL files from Qt (in my case they were in C:\Qt\Qt5.1.1\5.1.1\msvc2012_64_opengl\bin) to this folder.
Try to execute again, it will probably works fine.
Start to delete progressively and try every time your executable still works, trying to leave the minimum necessary DLL files.
When you have all the DLL files in the same folder it is easier to find which of them are not valid (XML, WebKit, ... whatever..), and consequently this method doesn't take more than five minutes.
I just resolved the same problem.
Dependency Walker is misleading in this case and caused me to lose time. So, the list of "missing" DLL files from the first post is not helpful, and you can probably ignore it.
The solution is to find which references your project is calling and check if they are really installed on the server.
#Ben Brammer, it is not important which three .ocx files are missing, because they are missing only for Leo T Abraham's project. Your project probably calls other DLL files.
In my case, it was not three .ocx files, but missing MySQL connector DLL file. After installing of MySQL Connector for .NET on server, the problem disappeared.
So, in short, the solution is: check if all your project references are there.
As mentioned, DCOMP is part of the VC++ redistributables (implementing the OpenMP runtime) and is the only truly missing component. All the rest are false reports.
Specifically API-MS-WIN-XXXX.DLL are API-sets - essentially, an extra level of call indirection introduced gradually since Windows 7. Dependency Walker development seemingly halted long before that, and it can't handle API sets properly.
So there is nothing to worry about there. You're not missing anything more.
A better alternative to find the truly needed DLL files that are missing (if that is indeed the problem) is to run Process Monitor and step backwards from the failure, searching for sequences of failed probes for a specific DLL file in all the system path.
I also ran into this problem, but the solution that seems to be a common thread here, and I saw elsewhere on the web, is "[re]install the redistributable package". However, for me that does not work, as the problem arose when running the installer for our product (which installs the redistributable package) to test our shiny new Visual Studio 2015 builds.
The issue came up because the DLL files listed are not located in the Visual Studio install path (for example, C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\redist) and thus had not been added to the install. These api-ms-win-* dlls get installed to a Windows 10 SDK install path as part of the Visual Studio 2015 install (e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Redist).
Installing on Windows 10 worked fine, but installing on Windows 7 required adding these DLL files to our product install. For more information, see Update for Universal C Runtime in Windows which describes the addition of these dependencies caused by Visual Studio 2015 and provides downloads for various Windows platforms; also see Introducing the Universal CRT which describes the redesign of the CRT libraries. Of particular interest is item 6 under the section titled Distributing Software that uses the Universal CRT:
Updated September 11, 2015: App-local deployment of the Universal CRT is supported. To obtain the binaries for app-local deployment, install the Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows 10. The binaries will be installed to C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Redist\ucrt. You will need to copy all of the DLLs with your app (note that the set of DLL files are necessary is different on different versions of Windows, so you must include all of the DLL files in order for your program to run on all supported versions of Windows).
This contribution does not really answer the initial question, but taking into account the hit-rate of this thread I assume that there are quite a few people dealing with the problem that API-MS-WIN-CORE- libraries cannot be found.
I was able to solve a problem where my application refused to start with the error message that API-MS-WIN-CORE-WINRT-STRING-L1-1-0.DLL is not found by simply updating Visual Studio.
I don't think that my build environment (Windows 7 Pro SP1, Visual Studio Ultimate 2012) was messed up completely, it worked fine for most of my projects. But under some very specific circumstances I got the error message (see below).
After updating Visual Studio 11 from the initial CD-Version (I forgot to look up the version number) to version 11.0.61030.00 Update 4 also the broken project was running again.
This solved the issue for me:
Uninstall the Visual Studio 2010 redistributable package if you have it installed already, and then install Microsoft Windows 7 SDK.
I solved the problem. When I registered the OCX files, I ran it with the Command Window that had been executed as an administrator.
For anybody who came here, but with a Photoshop problem: my solution was to uninstall the MS VC++ redistributable first x86 and 64 both. Then install one appropriate to the Windows version and architecture (86 or 64).
Installation of SQL Server Management Studio 2014 on a freshly installed Windows 7 resolved this problem at our client after a two-day ridiculous battle.
I came here with this problem occurring, after trying a fresh Windows 7 OEM install, upgrading to Windows 10.
After some searching of Microsoft forums and such I found the following solution which worked for me:
Replace C:\Windows10Upgrade\wimgapi.dll with the one from C:\Windows\System32\wimgapi.dll
I suggest also checking how much memory is currently being used.
It turns out that the inability to find these DLL files was the first symptom exhibited when trying to run a program (either run or debug) in Visual Studio.
After over a half hour with much head scratching, searching the web, running Process Monitor, and Task Manager, and depends, a completely different program that had been running since the beginning of time reported that "memory is low; try stopping some programs" or some such. After killing Firefox, Thunderbird, Process Monitor, and depends, everything worked again.
I had the same problem. After spending hours searching on the web, I found a solution for me.
I copied the file combase.dll file (C:\Windows\System32) to the release folder, and it resolved the problem.
Just to confirm answers here, my resolution was to copy the DLL that was not loading AND the ocx file that accompanied it to the system32 folder, that resolved my issue.

How to deploy a Win32 API application as an executable

How can I deploy my Win32 application as an EXE application so that others (who don't have VC++ installed) can use it?
I am using VC++ 2010 on Windows 7.
If you switch to "Release" mode when you compile your finished program (rather than "Debug", which you use for debugging it during development), you should get an executable that will run on a computer without Visual Studio installed.
However, that executable will still require the appropriate version of the C runtime library to be installed. For example, if you developed it in Visual C++ 2010, you will need version 10 of the CRT installed. This is a freely redistributable library, downloadable here.
So, you have several options for deployment:
Manual Deployment
Give people the bare executable file, and include the installer for the redistributable in another folder on the installation media. If they copy the executable to disk and cannot run it because they get an error message, they should install the CRT libraries from the included redistributable installer. Then the executable will run just fine.
This works great if you have relatively a computer-savvy audience, or you're deploying to a fixed range of machines (like across a school or corporation). But it doesn't work so well for general deployment to customers.
In fact, you don't even need the installer. You can just place the CRT DLLs in the same folder as your executable and it will run just fine. This is how I test apps I'm developing on clean VMs. It works like a charm. There's no need to run the CRT installer at all. You'll find these required libraries as part of your Visual Studio installation:
<Program Files folder>\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\redist\x86
Automated Deployment
Create a setup program that automatically installs your application along with any dependencies it requires, including the CRT redistributable. This is what you see most commercial applications doing. I recommend it for anything but the most trivial of apps.
Full versions of Visual Studio 2010 (i.e., not Express versions) can create a Setup Project that you can customize as needed to work as an installer for your application. But this is no longer the recommended way to create an installer, and this functionality has been removed from the latest version of Visual Studio, 2012.
So I recommend using something else, even if you have an older version of VS where the Setup Project is available. No point in wasting time creating something you'll just have to update later. My personal favorite choices for creating setup programs are WiX and Inno Setup. Both are free, and extensive documentation is available online.
Creating simple setups that don't have to do very much is really quite straightforward—this is likely the case for you, as all you need to do is install the CRT redistributable if it is not already there. I'd be willing to bet money you can find a walkthrough or example online for how to do this in either WiX or Inno Setup.
If you need to do more complicated stuff, both of these setup packages support it. They are extensively customizable and very powerful, it just takes more work to get it all going.
Static Linking
If you absolutely need to be able to distribute a bare executable that is guaranteed to simply work when double-clicked, you will need to switch your project to statically link in the required runtime libraries. This means that all of the CRT code is actually embedded by the linker directly into your executable, and means that you don't have to redistribute the CRT libraries separately.
The disadvantage of this approach is that the only way to benefit from improvements, bug fixes, and security patches released for the CRT is to recompile and redistribute your application. If you dynamically link (the default), your app will automatically benefit from enhancements to the installed version of the CRT libraries. Microsoft strongly recommends against static linking.
To switch between these modes in Visual Studio, follow these steps:
Right-click on your project in the Solution Explorer and select "Properties".
Ensure that the "Release" configuration is selected in the drop-down box at the top of the dialog.
Expand the "C/C++" item in the TreeView, and select "Code Generation".
Change the setting of the "Runtime Library" option to "Multi-threaded (/MT)".
A further description on what these cryptic compiler switches mean and which ones you should use when is given in my answer here.
Final Note: The "Debug" versions of the CRT libraries are not redistributable, but that doesn't matter because you should always distribute the "Release" build of your app anyway, never the "Debug" build.
In general, the odds are pretty good your EXE file will run on any version of Windows you built it on or higher.
All bets off, for example, if you built using Visual Studio 2012 Professional on Windows 7, and you try to run it on Windows 95. But otherwise, you're probably safe :)
The best way to test if you have any dependencies is to install and run on a "clean machine".
The best way to get (and reuse) a "clean machine" is with a VM.
I recommend VMWare. But Virtual Box and Windows Virtual PC are also viable choices.
As far as an installer, I'd strongly encourage you to look at InnoSetup
I hope that helps!
Make sure you build in release mode. As Floris Velleman said, you're using unneeded libraries for standalone executable.
For more information, you can check Compiler Options (MSDN).

The program can't start because msvcp80.dll is missing

I work on a machine with win 7 32bit on visual studio 2010.
I tried to run in release mode a code that work fine on other computer(win7 64bit), and the following message came up:
The program can't start because msvcp80.dll is missing...
I tried looking up at threads dealing with this problem. tried to install diffrent Redistributable runtime versions. tried to copy those files(msvcp80.dll,msvcm80.dll, msvcr80.dll) to the project dir. and some diffrent things I don't even realised what I'm doing.
maybe some other ideas?
OK
thanks for your answers.
before i started the project i confirm all the build dll are 32bit.
I work on a 'opencv' project and narrow the problem to this one: the only problem occurred on opencv_imgproc230 lib function (like cvtColor, GaussianBlur)' what cause me to check with the program above(the_mandrill's link) the includes at this dll. it's include(or point I guess) for msvcp100.dll what seems reasonable because i work on VS10 enviroment.but even though it's screams for msvcp80.dll what belongs to VS80 I think.
by the way, when i manually include (msvcp80.dll,msvcm80.dll, msvcr80.dll) it's screams:
"R6034 An application has made an attempt to load the c runtime library incorrectly..."
It's seems that it's need to tell him to work with the VS10 version(for this dll's/runtime library)
Install Dependency Walker and run in 'Profile' mode (f7) which will show you the dlls it's looking for and failing to find.
This just means that you link agains MSVC C runtime dynamically.
So you have to install the so called redist package.
msvcp80.dll -> VC 8 -> VS 2005
X86 – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=32BC1BEE-A3F9-4C13-9C99-220B62A191EE&displaylang=en
X64 - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=90548130-4468-4BBC-9673-D6ACABD5D13B&displaylang=en
The dlls where installed to a central place by the redisrt package and should be resolvable after installation.
Can you check to see if your dlls are 32bit ? Maybe you have the 64 bit versions.
See How can I test a Windows DLL file to determine if it is 32 bit or 64 bit?.
See this question.
You mentioned that you've installed the VC8 redistribute packages, but you may have missed the "correct" one.
You probably want: Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package MFC Security Update

Where to download older versions of Visual C++ Express?

Is there a way to download older versions of Visual C++ Express? I'm particularly interested in Visual C++ 2005 Express (PRIOR SP1) and Visual C++ Toolkit 2003. I tried googling for them, but all the sites linked to microsoft.com, from where microsoft (for some reason) has taken them down.
If you want to link your application against the RTM (pre-SP1) version of the CRT (C runtime), you can apparently do that by defining _USE_RTM_VERSION in your project or on the compiler command line.
Also, deploying the CRT as a private assembly should still work with the SP1 version of the CRT. If that is what you have tried to do, posting more information about what went wrong might help you find a solution.
I also put this in a comment above, but just to make sure you don't miss it: if you're trying to do this because you're having problems with deployment and different versions of dll's, have a look at App does not run with VS 2008 SP1 DLLs, previous version works with RTM versions.
For those of us who find this answer looking for something after 2010 the following link worked as of this posting:
Older Visual Studio Downloads
Microsoft owns it. If they don't have a link anymore, I think you're out of luck.
I'll bet their web crawlers automatically page their lawyers if they ever find a copy on the web.
There is no good reason to run 2005 before SP1, you do realize 2005 /w SP1 compiled code will run the same for the end user, they don't need to install a .NET SP to run the code.
The SP fixes bugs, security holes and various improvements, virtually no functionality changes, you only loose by not using /w the latest SP.
From my personal experience the software compiled with SP1 doesn't simply work, if the end user hasn't installed the redistributables. Without SP1 however it is possible to get the .exe working if you distribute it with the required .dlls.

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