I’ve been meaning to blog about this for well over a year now, but for some reason I never got round to it. This came up in conversation the other day with a couple of workmates and it prompted me to revisit the issue.
Have you ever fired up an application on Windows XP and got the following error?
The application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.
Informative isn’t it! What about if you fire up the same application on Windows Vista?
The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log for more detail.
This does tell us a little bit more about the problem, but not a lot more.
The fact is that the first error message above is useless, and the second is useless to everyone except those who know all about WinSxS (side-by-side). I’m not going to go into detail about WinSxS in this article, but the short description is: it’s an attempt at alleviating DLL hell.
When a binary component links against a DLL, such as MS’s CRT, an entry for that dependant DLL is specified in the component’s manifest. This tells Windows that the application can’t run without those DLLs being present. If they’re not present in WinSxS then the errors above are thrown in the user’s face.
To demonstrate the problem, consider the C++ program below.
#include <windows.h> #include <tchar.h> int WINAPI _tWinMain(HINSTANCE instance, HINSTANCE prevInstance, LPTSTR cmdLine, int cmdShow) { ::MessageBox(NULL, _T("This is a text executable that links against a later version of the runtimes."), _T("Test EXE"), MB_OK); return 0; }
Compile this on a machine with Vis Studio 2008 installed and the resulting EXE will be linked against version 9.0 of the CRT.
Here is the result of running this on an XP machine without that runtime installed:
Here’s the same application running on Vista, again without the runtime installed:
Let’s now pretend that we don’t know why this problem is occuring and attempt to ascertain the reason for the error.
First off, we need to locate the application’s manifest. This can be found either in a appname.exe.manifest file, or inside the binary itself. In our case, the manifest is embedded so we need to open up the file in a binary/hex editor (or at least an editor that allows you to view the content of binary files). I used VIM, but there are other options such as UltraEdit and the free Cynus editor.
Manifest information is usually stored towards the end of the file, so after opening it in your editor of choice, scroll to the end of the file and slowly scroll up. When you reach a section that contains what looks to be XML then you’ve probably found it. It usually lies just above a section of padding that looks like this:
0001ab0: 5041 4444 494e 4758 5850 4144 4449 4e47 PADDINGXXPADDING 0001ac0: 5041 4444 494e 4758 5850 4144 4449 4e47 PADDINGXXPADDING 0001ad0: 5041 4444 494e 4758 5850 4144 4449 4e47 PADDINGXXPADDING 0001ae0: 5041 4444 494e 4758 5850 4144 4449 4e47 PADDINGXXPADDING 0001af0: 5041 4444 494e 4758 5850 4144 4449 4e47 PADDINGXXPADDING 0001b00: 5041 4444 494e 4758 5850 4144 4449 4e47 PADDINGXXPADDING 0001b10: 5041 4444 494e 4758 5850 4144 4449 4e47 PADDINGXXPADDING 0001b20: 5041 4444 494e 4758 5850 4144 4449 4e47 PADDINGXXPADDING 0001b30: 5041 4444 494e 4758 5850 4144 4449 4e47 PADDINGXXPADDING 0001b40: 5041 4444 494e 4758 5850 4144 4449 4e47 PADDINGXXPADDING 0001b50: 5041 4444 494e 4758 5850 4144 4449 4e47 PADDINGXXPADDING 0001b60: 5041 4444 494e 4758 5850 4144 4449 4e47 PADDINGXXPADDING 0001b70: 5041 4444 494e 4758 5850 4144 4449 4e47 PADDINGXXPADDING
The manifest XML usually begins with an assembly tag. In the case of this example, it looks like this:
0001850: e404 0000 0000 0000 3c61 7373 656d 626c ........<assembl 0001860: 7920 786d 6c6e 733d 2275 726e 3a73 6368 y xmlns="urn:sch 0001870: 656d 6173 2d6d 6963 726f 736f 6674 2d63 emas-microsoft-c 0001880: 6f6d 3a61 736d 2e76 3122 206d 616e 6966 om:asm.v1" manif 0001890: 6573 7456 6572 7369 6f6e 3d22 312e 3022 estVersion="1.0" 00018a0: 3e0d 0a20 203c 7472 7573 7449 6e66 6f20 >.. <trustInfo 00018b0: 786d 6c6e 733d 2275 726e 3a73 6368 656d xmlns="urn:schem 00018c0: 6173 2d6d 6963 726f 736f 6674 2d63 6f6d as-microsoft-com 00018d0: 3a61 736d 2e76 3322 3e0d 0a20 2020 203c :asm.v3">.. < 00018e0: 7365 6375 7269 7479 3e0d 0a20 2020 2020 security>.. 00018f0: 203c 7265 7175 6573 7465 6450 7269 7669 <requestedPrivi 0001900: 6c65 6765 733e 0d0a 2020 2020 2020 2020 leges>.. 0001910: 3c72 6571 7565 7374 6564 4578 6563 7574 <requestedExecut 0001920: 696f 6e4c 6576 656c 206c 6576 656c 3d22 ionLevel level=" 0001930: 6173 496e 766f 6b65 7222 2075 6941 6363 asInvoker" uiAcc 0001940: 6573 733d 2266 616c 7365 223e 3c2f 7265 ess="false"></re 0001950: 7175 6573 7465 6445 7865 6375 7469 6f6e questedExecution 0001960: 4c65 7665 6c3e 0d0a 2020 2020 2020 3c2f Level>.. </ 0001970: 7265 7175 6573 7465 6450 7269 7669 6c65 requestedPrivile 0001980: 6765 733e 0d0a 2020 2020 3c2f 7365 6375 ges>.. </secu 0001990: 7269 7479 3e0d 0a20 203c 2f74 7275 7374 rity>.. </trust 00019a0: 496e 666f 3e0d 0a20 203c 6465 7065 6e64 Info>.. <depend 00019b0: 656e 6379 3e0d 0a20 2020 203c 6465 7065 ency>.. <depe 00019c0: 6e64 656e 7441 7373 656d 626c 793e 0d0a ndentAssembly>.. 00019d0: 2020 2020 2020 3c61 7373 656d 626c 7949 <assemblyI 00019e0: 6465 6e74 6974 7920 7479 7065 3d22 7769 dentity type="wi 00019f0: 6e33 3222 206e 616d 653d 224d 6963 726f n32" name="Micro 0001a00: 736f 6674 2e56 4339 302e 4352 5422 2076 soft.VC90.CRT" v 0001a10: 6572 7369 6f6e 3d22 392e 302e 3231 3032 ersion="9.0.2102 0001a20: 322e 3822 2070 726f 6365 7373 6f72 4172 2.8" processorAr 0001a30: 6368 6974 6563 7475 7265 3d22 7838 3622 chitecture="x86" 0001a40: 2070 7562 6c69 634b 6579 546f 6b65 6e3d publicKeyToken= 0001a50: 2231 6663 3862 3362 3961 3165 3138 6533 "1fc8b3b9a1e18e3 0001a60: 6222 3e3c 2f61 7373 656d 626c 7949 6465 b"></assemblyIde 0001a70: 6e74 6974 793e 0d0a 2020 2020 3c2f 6465 ntity>.. </de 0001a80: 7065 6e64 656e 7441 7373 656d 626c 793e pendentAssembly> 0001a90: 0d0a 2020 3c2f 6465 7065 6e64 656e 6379 .. </dependency 0001aa0: 3e0d 0a3c 2f61 7373 656d 626c 793e 5041 >..</assembly>PA
In case you don’t find this very readable, here it is after extraction/formatting:
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0"> <trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3"> <security> <requestedPrivileges> <requestedExecutionLevel level="asInvoker" uiAccess="false"></requestedExecutionLevel> </requestedPrivileges> </security> </trustInfo> <dependency> <dependentAssembly> <assemblyIdentity type="win32" name="Microsoft.VC90.CRT" version="9.0.21022.8" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b"> </assemblyIdentity> </dependentAssembly> </dependency> </assembly>
The bit we’re really interested in is:
<dependentAssembly>
<assemblyIdentity type=”win32″ name=”Microsoft.VC90.CRT” version=”9.0.21022.8″ processorArchitecture=”x86″ publicKeyToken=”1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b”></assemblyIdentity>
</dependentAssembly>
This tells us the exact component and version required for this application to run. You’ll notice that it also mentions the processor architecture. In this case, we need to make sure that we have version 9.0.21022.8 of the Visual C Runtimes for x86 installed in the side-by-side folder. The WinSxS folder can be found at %WINDIR%\WinSxS
Inside that folder you’ll probably see a stack of subfolders with crazy looking names. The one you would need to have to solve the problem above is called x86_microsoft.vc90.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_9.0.21022.8_none_bcb86ed6ac711f91, which as you can see has a name that closely resembles the properties of the assemblyIdentity tag in the XML listed above.
If you can’t find the appropriate folder in your WinSxS then you need to download an installer that contains the appropriate components and install it.When installed, the application should run without a problem, and you should get a message like this:
Hope that helps!
May 17, 2008
This is such an annoying problem. Windows really needs a mechanism to find and download dependencies of applications (kinda like the package managers in many Linux distributions). The average user is gonna have no clue at all what to do about this kind of thing and the error message really isn’t helpful.
I guess it would be possible to make your app detect that the dependencies aren’t there and to give the user a better message, but that’s just more work for the dev that really doesn’t need to happen.
May 18, 2008
The thing that amazes me about this is that in the “old” days you used to get a message box saying something like “Unable to find Foo.dll”. At least it told you the name of the dependency. The SxS stuff doesn’t.
I think that one of two things should happen:
I really don’t think it should be the job of the devs, to handle this every time. I certainly don’t think you should have to worry about it in the case of Microsoft’s runtimes.
May 20, 2008
Yeah, I wasn’t saying it *should* be the application developers job to write code to detect this and give a better error message, but in the meantime it might be a good way to reduce support calls since the OS is so useless at it.
Ideally, the OS should be able to put up a message saying that the runtime is missing and offer to download and install it for you.
June 19, 2008
I don’t have a folder called x86_microsoft.vc90.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_9.0.21022.8_none_bcb86ed6ac711f91 in WinS*S.
Where can I download it ?
June 19, 2008
@mathmax: Since I’m a nice guy, I’m going to answer your question, but in future you should use manners.
Based on the folder you listed, you are missing version 9 of Microsoft’s VC++ runtimes, which is the runtimes required by applications built using Visual Studio 2008.
Doing a simple Google search for this revealed this download link.
Hope that helps
June 19, 2008
Thank you for your help and sorry for being so brief in my last post.
I’ve installed the package on the link you gave. It although doesn’t solve my problem. I always get the error message when trying to execute the program with the Visual Studio Debugger.
I also had a look at the bin folder and have been surprised to see that there is no .exe file inside (only .obj files).
Do you have an idea of the problem ?
Regards,
mathmax
June 20, 2008
@mathmax: No worries mate, no hard feelings
I have seen this issue before. It sounds like the install of the runtimes is silently failing. The last time I saw this was when I tried to install the runtimes on a Vista machine. Are you using Vista? If so, are you running the install as an Administrator? Make sure that you do right-click and “Run as Administrator” even if the account you login as is an Admin too.
June 24, 2008
I’ve just been having a chat with Chris, who among others, have had this problem specifically when installing AVG antivirus (who I refuse to link to considering they are shipping products without the necessary runtimes).
If you’re having problems after installing AVG, chances are your WinSxS is missing this folder: x86_microsoft.vc90.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_9.0.21022.8_none_bcb86ed6ac711f91
If this is the case, you’ll need to get a copy of the Visual Studio 2008 runtimes for the x86 platform, located here. Make sure you run the install as Administrator if you run Vista (yes, even if you have UAC turned off). After running the install, make sure the folder above appears in your WinSxS folder, and that there are 3 DLL files in there.
Give me a shout if you’re still having issues.
June 24, 2008
After a bit more investigation and work alongside Chris, it appears that you also need the Vis Studio 2005 runtimes. WTF are AVG playing at?!
June 24, 2008
Yet another reason to add to my list of why I don’t install antivirus packages
June 24, 2008
Yikes! I’m using AVG 8 on Vista 64, though I had Visual Studio 2008 installed first so I guess that’s why I’ve never had the problem.
Shame cos it’s a really good free unintrusive AV program that does well in tests and doesn’t bog down your PC (yes you Symantec!!!).
June 24, 2008
Avast is a way better option (imho). I don’t have AV running on my new laptop either. I don’t download dodgey stuff, I don’t have outlook installed, I just use webmail. I don’t open dodgey emails regardless of the client that I use. I guess I agree with Rob and Atwood. AV is a waste of time if you’re not doing anything dodgey
June 24, 2008
Hey Oj
I have the Winsxs and everything but for some reason this folder x86_microsoft.vc90.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_9.0.21022.8_none_bcb86ed6ac711f91, is the only one that is missing. Where can i go to just download this file?
June 25, 2008
@Dee Mai: The link for that download has been posted twice already in this thread. Scroll up and read the previous comments.