Saturday, January 12, 2013

What is a Windows DLL File

What is a Windows DLL File:
A windows .dll file is a dynamic link library which is a method that windows uses to house commonly used features to make application development easier and to maintain the modularity of modern programming. The windows operating system contains over 10 million lines of programming code. With out modular programming, a small change in one part of the code could cause the entire system to stop working. The idea behind the dlls is to let an application call common features such as printing, opening a hyperlink, opening and closing a file, etc. Many hardware drivers are now written as dll files to take advantage of the windows API and minimize the possibility of interoperability problems. So basically a .dll file is an executable program that cannot run as a stand alone program. It must be called by another application to run.Missing windows .dll is a common error message that users receive when they try to run an application. You get this message for any one of several reasons. The most common causes of this error are:
  • You removed a program that uninstalled the windows .dll file that the program you are trying to opens needs to run.
  • You installed a new application and it over wrote the version the application needs and the new version of the .dll file doesn’t contain the required information.
  • Some software event that occurred on your computer corrupted the .dll your application needs
  • A hardware problem on your hard drive caused the file to become corrupted.
In all of these cases the solution is to find and install an uncorrupted version, or in some cases, the correct version of the needed file. There are several websites that offer windows .dll files for download. Some web sites provide free downloads and others charge a per download fee. Another source of an uncorrupted windows .dll is the broken applications original install disk or the windows installation disk. Either one of them may have the correct version of the missing or corrupted file.
Restore Points
Both windows XP and Vista users can try to restore their computer to an earlier configuration using the windows system restore feature. This feature allows you to undo any recent changes by reverting to the last configuration saved by the system.
Use the SPC Command
You can also use the SPC command to have windows scan and repair files on your hard drive. Perform the following steps to use the SPC command:
  • Select Start
  • Choose Run
  • Type spc /scannow into the dialog box and then press Enter.
Windows will scan the system and will verify the files and report the results.

Reinstall the broken application
You can always reinstall the broken application. Make sure that any files you have created that are stored in the program’s directory on the C drive are backed up because in most cases they will be deleted by the reinstallation. Since you are reinstalling your application, this would be a good time to visit the publisher’s website to see if there are free updates or patches available for the application and install them as well
In fact, if there are patches or updates, installing just them might fix your problem. If not, do the complete reinstall. If the problem was caused by another program overwriting the needed .dll file, that program may stop working after the reinstall.
Malware Infection
Another possible cause of windows .dll problems is your computer being infected with a virus, spyware or some other form of malware. Therefore, you need to run you anti-virus program to check for virus infections. Then run you spyware program. In both cases let the applications clean up the suspected files. Just to be on the safe side, when you have completed these scans use a good registry cleaner to remove any problems in the windows registry.
After completing these repair functions, then try reinstalling the broken application to see if that fixes the problem.
Summary
If none of the suggestions offered above solve your problem and it is a single application, contact the software’s publisher and ask their technical support how to fix the problem. As an alternative, you can check the online user forums for your application and see if anyone else has had this problem and how they fixed it. There usually is someone out there who can tell you how to fix almost any problem you might encounter.

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