Jay K

Hi,

I'm trying to get an MFC application compiled with VC++ 2005 to run on a machine with VC++ 2005 express. There seems to be a problem with the manifest (which I don't fully understand despite reading the info on msdn). The original error in the event log when I tried to run it said Microsoft.VC80.CRT not installed so I installed the platform SDK and also copied over the atlmfc directory from the development to target machine.

I also downloaded the VC++ 2005 redistributable and installed it. When I installed it, I didn't get any confirmation that the installation was successful, the installer appears to quit after displaying the progress bar. Is this the correct behaviour

Now I no longer get any messages in the event log but when I try to run the app I get an "Unable to start program ... This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect..."

This error occurs both inside Visual Studio and when I run the app directly. I've tried both the debug and release builds (I understand the redist doesn't include the debug libs).


Any help appreciated.

Jay.

Peter Ritchie

Express does not include MFC/ATL. What "VC++ 2005 redistributable" did you install An Express redistributable won't have MFC/ATL...

Jay K

The redist is called "Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Package (x86)" available at

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx displaylang=en&FamilyID=32BC1BEE-A3F9-4C13-9C99-220B62A191EE

From the description: " This package installs runtime components of C Runtime (CRT), Standard C++, ATL, MFC, OpenMP and MSDIA libraries."

I also copied the mfc directory from a machine with VS 2005 professional so that I could try to recompile on the VS express machine. That didn't work either.

Jay.

Jonas Nordlund

Note that the redistributable above may not run applications compiled in Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 as such executables want slightly revised versions of the runtime DLL's. It took us some while here to figure that out and thought it wasn't well documented.

I'm unsure if a redistributable for that version is available online yet, but it's shipped with
Visual Studio 2005 SP1 at:

"%PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\vcredist_x86"

Peter Ritchie

Your original message only mentioned running the application on the machine with Express installed. Now you're saying you're trying to compile it with Express Express does not support MFC or ATL.

3d_developer

Hi Jonas,

Could you please provide more details on the issue you hit with versions of C Runtimes We're seeing a rash of issues with our executables being unable to find C Runtime DLLs (MSVCR80.DLL being the most common one) on some XP SP2 machines and haven't found a solution yet. The executables and most dlls are native C++ with one mixed-mode C++ dll and one C# dll. The C++ code uses MFC and the C# dll uses WPF and COM interop, etc.

We also see the DWMAPI.DLL missing issue when we run dependes, but other forum threads indicate that's a false missing dependency.

We are embedding manifests in our executables and the manifests are correct, the Windows\WinSxS folder seems to contain the correct versions of the C Runtime DLLs (8.0.50727.42 and 8.0.50727.163), etc. We do install the .NET 3.0 redistributable on machines as part of the install. And on the machine where the executable is built, everything runs fine. So I'm hoping you might have some information that would help us solve this problem.

For example, if the Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for WPF install something special on machines that they don't get from the normal VC redistributable, that would explain it. I haven't tried that yet...

Thanks -Bob

Nikola Dudar - MSFT

It looks like there are several issues mixed up in this thread.

Jay K wrote:

I'm trying to get an MFC application compiled with VC++ 2005 to run on a machine with VC++ 2005 express.

Jay, is there a reason you are trying to do this As Peter has already pointed out, you cannot build MFC applications with VC++2005 Express, not matter you install or you do not install VC++ Redistributable Package.

Jay K wrote:

I've tried both the debug and release builds (I understand the redist doesn't include the debug libs).

You can only redistribute release version of VC++ libraries. Once you have built a release version of your MFC application, you can run it on a computer that does not have VS2005 installed after you have deployed MFC and CRT DLLs using ways described here, http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms235316(VS.80).aspx

Jonas Nordlund wrote:

Note that the redistributable above may not run applications compiled in Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 as such executables want slightly revised versions of the runtime DLL's. It took us some while here to figure that out and thought it wasn't well documented. I'm unsure if a redistributable for that version is available online yet, but it's shipped with Visual Studio 2005 SP1 at: "%PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\vcredist_x86"

This is correct. VS2005 SP1 installs new versions of VC++ libraries that contain fixes requested by customers for the SP1 release. Once Sp1 is installed it updates all VC++ assemblies in WinSxS folder, vcredist_*.exe in bootstrapp packages folder, associated .lib and .pdb for VC++ libraries and many other source files. Once application is rebuilt with VS2005 SP1, it depends on SP1 version of libraries and SP1 version of VC++ libraries have to be redistributed. This is not new policy for VS2005. In all previous versions of Visual Studio and Visual C++, QFE and SP releases of DLLs replace previous versions of DLLs in place. VC maintains full backward binary-compatibility in hotfix and SP releases of VC++ DLLs if compared to RTM versions. Once an application is rebuilt with SP or a hotfix version of VC++ libraries, it depends on that version of libraries and have to use them at runtime. This is also described in docs, http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa983349(VS.80).aspx

We have no plans of posting SP1 version of VCRedist for download. You should be using version of vcredist_*.exe installed by VS2005 SP1.

3d_developer wrote:

We're seeing a rash of issues with our executables being unable to find C Runtime DLLs (MSVCR80.DLL being the most common one) on some XP SP2 machines and haven't found a solution yet. ... We are embedding manifests in our executables and the manifests are correct, the Windows\WinSxS folder seems to contain the correct versions of the C Runtime DLLs (8.0.50727.42 and 8.0.50727.163), etc.

Bob, I think you have a different issue. Perhaps start another discussion on this. Please be specific in description of your build environment and mention what versions of VS2005 you have installed. Identify specifically what VC++ libraries your application depends on, what versions of them, etcs. Make sure your application installs the same versions of the libraries on another computer by using VC++ redistributable MSMs or VC++ Redistributable Package, http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms235316(VS.80).aspx. You may find more information about how troubleshoot loading issues here, http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms235342(VS.80).aspx

Nikola

VC++

DaveMellor

I thought Manifests were an end to DLL hell - but it just seems that now we have manifest hell. The CRT seems to change rapidly so there are new VCREDIST_x86 releases for each change - but where are the corresponding merge modules The only merge modules I can find for CRT Version 8 are for old builds - is it the case that developers should ship VCREDIST_X86 as the preferred method of redistribution or are merge modules preferrable From an installation (end user) point of view including merge modules is cleaner and adding new versions of the CRT to a target system shouldn't break any existing applications (providing they are strongly bound to the cache DLLs on which they depend). So why no merge modules for each corresponding VCREDIST_X86 et al

Or should all deployments use private side by side installs of the CRT/MFC dependancies (sigh)

3d_developer

Thanks Nikola. I'm embarrassed to say that my problem turned out to be old application manifest files were sometimes being left in the same install folder as the executable, causing the embedded manifest to be ignored. Once we fixed our install to remove the old manifest files, everything works great.

But I do agree with another poster that it would be great if Microsoft had a clear set of web pages explaining manifest files and with links to all the various versions of the C runtime listed explaining what changed for each and merge modules / developer installs for each available. For example, I have versions 8.0.50727.163 and 8.0.50727.42 on one of my machines, but only version 8.0.50727.42 on most others. I have no clue what install installed 8.0.50727.163 and nothing on Microsoft's web site has told me yet. Additionally, I found that SQL Server 2005 installed its own copy of MSVC80 DLLs in their install folders, not in the WinSxS folders, which caused additional confusion as on those machines some of the DLLs were found.

oflebbe

>We have no plans of posting SP1 version of VCRedist for download. You should be using >version of vcredist_*.exe installed by VS2005 SP1.

I like to kindly remind you that the SP1 does not install/upgrade a vcredist_*.exe for C++ Express Edition. My posting regarding this issue is not answered in the Express Forum. Microsoft should place an upgraded vcredist.exe on their websites, otherwise many express users will have to work with private assemblies.

Olaf

Peter Ritchie

And actually, the Microsoft documentation recommends that VCRedist be used for deployment of applications built with Visual C++ Express. That's ridiculous if the VCRedist binaries are not installed with SP1 and there are no plans on making an SP1 VCRedist available!

JohnReid

I've installed visual studio express 2005 SP1 and now some DLLs I build can't be loaded because of a msvcr80.dll dependency. DWMAPI.dll is also listed as missing as 3d_developer noted.

I might also have installed this earlier:

Visual C++ 2005 Express Service Pack 1 Beta

could this be causing these problems

Please note this is all on my developer machine. I have not even tried installing this stuff on others' machines.

Any ideas on how I can go about tracking this problem down. What more info might be relevant

Merry xmas!
John.

Ted.

Agreed, the SP1 vcredist files should be made available for download.

JohnReid

I have very similar symptoms to 3d_developer but I don't have old manifest files hanging around. Again this is all on the development machine. I have vc++ express with sp1 installed. I may have installed sp1 beta a while ago. All the dlls I build depend on msvcr80.dll and dwmapi.dll and do not load because they cannot be found.

Any ideas as to how I can find out what is wrong I have tried rebuilding everything from scratch.

How can I uninstall sp1 Do I need to uninstall everything and start again

Thanks,
John.

Nelson B

Above, Nikola Dudar - MSFT wrote: "Once Sp1 is installed it updates all VC++ assemblies in WinSxS folder, vcredist_*.exe in bootstrapp packages folder, associated .lib and .pdb for VC++ libraries and many other source files."

But my experience is that SP1 does NOT install a vcredist_x86.exe in bootstrapper/packages, and neither does it install any pdb for MSVCR80D.DLL.
Many others have reported in this forum that they, too, did not get any vcredist_x86.exe with SP1.

So, what's the story and how do we get the missing redistributable package
Do we have incomplete installations of SP1