Problem deploying Visual C++ application compiled under Visual Studio 2005
Target machine is a clean install, Windows XP Tablet PC edition, never had any development tools on it. After doing XCopy deploy of .exe and associated .dlls, trying to run the application gives error Message Box:
“The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0150002). Click on OK to terminate the application.”
From the Microsoft posting “How to: Deploy using XCopy” http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms235291(VS.80).aspx, you might think that running vcredist_x86.exe (comes with Visual Studio setup) would solve the problem. It doesn’t.
Going to try the dependency walker tool to see if I can determine what else might be needed.
It turns out that the dependency walker (”Depends”) tool was very informative and pointed out missing dependencies msvcr80.dll, msvcp80.dll and winmm.dll. However, that was only half of the story.
My .exe still wouldn’t run - it kept giving the same “The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0150002).” error. Hmmmm.
Time to pull out the File system monitor, otherwise known as Filemon (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/
Filemon.mspx). This is a truly amazing tool that monitors all file system activity. It has saved my rear more than once.
After working with it for a while, I kept noticing a NOT FOUND result in Filemon when csrss.exe was trying to access C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\Policies\x86_policy.8.0.
Microsoft.VC80.DebugCRT…. Suddenly a light bulb came on - Policies…Debug…Hmmm. Sure enough, recompile in release and redeploy the app - now it runs fine on the target machine.
Looks like there are policies that need to get set up in order to run debug code on a machine.
Live and learn.
