Library problem, Windows 7, IVF 11.1.051

[salbruce]

My IVF 11.1.051 produces dll's that all instantly crash on some Windows 7 machines but run on other 7 machines as well as Vista and XP.

Here is the situation:

We are launching about two dozen IVF dlls from a Delphi Pascal exe. To save space we are using non-static libraries. The dlls work on XP, Vista, and a standalone Windows 7 machine. But they crash on Windows 7 machines at a major university computing lab. This is true whether they are run over the network (exe's, dll's, and required fortran libraries on network drive), or run as standalone from a jump drive on one of the Windows 7 machines.

A key point: If I change the compiler settings to use static libraries, then the dlls work, both over the network and locally on those Windows 7 computer lab machines.

Other clues:
- I have run Dependency Walker on the dlls on the network. It reported that IESHIMS.DLL was missing. I found this to be present in C:\Program files\Internet Explorer, so to test this I copied the file to the executable folder. No luck -- still crashes. Rerunning Dependency Walker says all is ok except 2 potential delay load problems (which it seems to report regardless of whether the dll works or not).

- The network installation of the IVF dlls works correctly when run from an XP machine, even without using static libraries.

- I tried unchecking the compiler switch for "Use common Windows libraries", but this didn't seem to change anything.

- CVF dlls launched from the same exe work on XP, Vista, and Windows 7 machines, standalone or via the network, university computing lab or not. Basically the CVF dlls work in all of these situations.

I'm thinking that IVF is not finding or accessing some necessary Windows dlls on the computing lab machines, even though Dependency Walker can find them. But I am at a loss as to how to correct the problem, other than recompiling all of our dlls with static libraries -- which we prefer not to do because the resulting file sizes are about 4-5X for each dll.

Unfortunately, no error messages are produced when our exe launches the IVF dll -- it just hangs instantly, requiring escape with Task Manager.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,
Bruce

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Are you willing to provide us with the project that builds this DLL so that we can investigate the problem? If it were an issue of not finding a DLL, you would get an error message.