DLL
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DLL files errors
Posted by admin on 30 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: DLL, Error, Windows
It’s highly likely that you’ll have experienced a DLL error at some point. Why? Because they’re some of the most common errors to receive on any Windows system.
DLL stands for Dynamic Link Library. The clue to their purpose is in the title. It’s the job of DLL files to link data in a way that can be accessed by more than one file. They act as library files to store procedures and basic information. When a piece of software wishes to use this, it will send a request and, usually, retrieve the information. But this isn’t always the case.
Due to the nature of applications sharing the same libraries of files, it’s a distinct possibility that the DLLs will become corrupt or out of date.
If one program requires a DLL update for example, the process can be easily automated by you or me. But what we might not realise is that the same file was being used by another application on the system! While we might have reconfigured the new program to find the DLL file, the old program won’t be able to trace it. This is just one of many scenarios where you’ll be returned with a rather ambiguous DLL error.
Here are a few that you can expect to see.
- A required .DLL file was not found. Unable to…
- The DLL File may be missing or corrupt.
- The following file has been replaced by an older version…
There are a couple of ways that you can go about fixing DLL errors, and it will very much depend on how automated you want the repair job to be.
The first option is to browse the Net and locate the DLL file that is giving you the problems. It’s done easily enough. DLLs are readily available across a wide number of websites (watch out for the merchants that try to sell you free fixes), and you can download them in a matter of seconds. Ensure that you re-configure the software to run off your new DLL files and you should be up and running.
It’s also possible to roll back the software changes that you’ve made since the error started appearing. Obviously, this isn’t ideal. We don’t want to be in the situation where we can’t upgrade our applications for fear of a stray DLL file.
The best solution is to download a free registry cleaning utility. These are specifically designed to check a system’s registry and sniff out any DLL files which have become corrupted or are no longer of use.
The registry cleaner will, more often than not, fix your DLL problems. If it isn’t able to, it should at least point you in the right direction by highlighting the source of the error.
It’s also a wise idea, as it always is, to keep your system protected with anti-Malware software. This can go a long way towards preventing those future corruptions of DLL files. For such tiny little libraries, they can have a quite devastating effect on the functionality of an application.
Browse the Net with anti-Virus protection and the latest firewall available. We’d also recommend keeping all of your software up to date in order to avoid situations where you have DLL files which are generations apart. This is much more likely to lead to errors on the application surface.
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ASPX File Format
Posted by admin on 16 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: ASP, DLL, Server
ASPX is a file format that is used by ASP.NET. First we will start by giving you a brief overview of what exactly ASP.NET is. ASP.NET is a web application framework that has been marketed by Microsoft towards programmers. It is used to allow them to create dynamic web sites, web applications and XML web services and is part of Microsoft’s .NET platform that is the successor to Acitive Server Pages.
The ASPX file format is a text file format that is used to create Webform pages which means that it will often contain static HTML and other comands to define Web Controls and Web User Controls where the web site creator can place all of the static and dynamic content that is required for a given web page. Dynamic code that is run on a web server can also be placed within a block on the page which is similar to other techniques such as PHP and JSP.
It is recommended that the dynamic code for a web page be placed in a separate file. This is called the code-behind model. These files are typically named based on the ASPX file name but with an additional two letter extension. When this type of programming technique is used, the programmer with write code that corresponds to various different evens such as the page being loaded or a button on the page being clicked on. This is different from other programming which is a procedural walkthrough for the entire document.
The ASP.NET framework attempts to achieve greater performance over other similar technologies by compiling the server side code into very few DLL files on a web server. This will happen automatically the first time that a web page is requested, which means that the programmer will not have to compile each page separately. This offers ease of development that other scripting languages have as well as the performance benefits of a compiled binary. The only drawback to this technic is that it may cause a noticable delay to the internet user when a new web page is requested for the first time from the web server.
The ASPX file as well as any other required files are put in a virtual host on a compatible ASP.NET server. The first time that a page is requested, the .NET framework will compile the files and send the response. Any requests after this are served from the dll files. Developers can also precomile their pages before deployment which helps eliminate the need for compilation in a production environment that needs good performance.
There are also many other file formats that can be assocaiated to other versions of ASP.NET. Some of these include the ASAX, ASCX, ASHX and ASMX, however, there are many others as well.
For more information on the ASPX file format and ASP.NET framework there is an ASP.NET website to help get you started. This site includes tutorials to get you started, and free developers to use when creating your ASP.NET web pages.
ActiveX Controls - what are they?
Posted by pcfix on 21 Aug 2007 | Tagged as: Active X, ActiveX, DLL, Java, Windows
An ActiveX Control is simply a control that uses ActiveX technology. ActiveX is a set of rules for how applications should share information and an ActiveX Control can be downloaded by your web browser. Many programmers will develop ActiveX Controls using programming languages such as C, C++, Visual Basic and Java.
ActiveX was developed by Microsoft as an alternative to Java applets. Therefore an ActiveX Control is very similar to a Java applet. ActiveX Controls do have one advantage over a Java applet however. Unlike a Java applet, an ActiveX Control has full access to the Windows operating system. Because of this, ActiveX Controls have much more power than a Java applet, but there are also increased security risks as a result of this additional access. In an attempt to address the increased security risk of an ActiveX Control, Microsoft created an electronic signature system so that a web browser could identify and validate ActiveX Controls before downloading them. The one downfall to an ActiveX Control is that it can only work in Windows operating systems and therefore is unavailable to Linux and other operating system users.
The biggest downfall to ActiveX is that it relies entirely on the end user to make decisions about whether or not a specific ActiveX Control can be trusted. The internet browser will identify and verify the ActiveX Control using an electronic signature. But once it has done that, the end user is prompted with the information and asked if they would like to allow the ActiveX Control to run.
If the programmer of the ActiveX Control is trusted, there is no inherent danger in an ActiveX Control. However, if the author of the ActiveX Control is not trusted, he or she may have created an ActiveX Control that contains malicious code, making an ActiveX Control very dangerous for your system. The biggest problems usually occur when an Internet Explorer user configures their web browser to accept ActiveX Controls from un-trusted websites. Malicious ActiveX Controls are a very common way for hackers to distribute malicious software, and therefore, an internet user should be very careful about the ActiveX Controls that they accept. To help protect from this, a computer user could use a different web browser that does not use the Trident rendering engine.
An ActiveX Control is just a glorified COM object, so there are many different ways that they can be written. Using Microsoft Foundation Classes is a method that is usually not recommended because the MFC DLLs are too large. Using Active Template Library on the other hand, is the most used method fro writing ActiveX Controls and is also the simplest way. Writing an ActiveX Control using C or C++ is the most difficult way and requires lots of supporting code in order for it to work correctly. For this reason, this method is not used very often. Finally, ActiveX Controls can be written in programming languages that support COM. An example of this would be Visual Basic.
ActiveX Controls are all around you without you even knowing. Some very popular examples of ActiveX Controls include Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash Player, Apple QuickTime Player, Microsoft Windows Media Player and many others.
How to fix Directx9 errors
Posted by pcfix on 12 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: DLL, Error, Windows
DirectX is used for many things in Windows. Most importantly, it allows programmers to standardized video and audio files so that they are compatible with a larger range of computers. DirectX should be backwards compatible allowing programs created for an older version of DirectX to work properly on newer versions of it. However, if a program has been written to work on DirectX 9, it will generally not work on DirectX 8 or lower.Some of the common DirectX errors you will see include “unable to find file d3d.dll, ddraw.dll or d3d9.dll”,”cannot initialize dinput9.dll”, “This application has failed to start because d3d9.dll was not found…”, “dplay.dll has performed an illegal operation”, “Fatal Exception error in dplayx.dll”, Access violation error in DirectX file D3D8.DLL”, “A required .DLL File, D3D9.DLL, was not found”, a black or empty display screen or looping audio, pulsing sound or no sound at all.
Most of these problems are a result of an older version of DirectX being installed on your computer. Therefore the first step in trying to solve the issues is to download the latest version of DirectX (currently DirectX 9.0c) which is available from the Microsoft web site. Once you have gotten the file from Microsoft, follow the instructions that they provide to upgrade or install the latest DirectX version onto your computer.
If you want to know what version of DirectX is currently on your computer, you can check it by selecting Start, Run and then typing “dxdiag” and clicking on OK. You will see a window appear on your monitor that will tell you what version of DirectX is installed on your computer. If this version is not the latest, be sure to update your DirectX using the instructions above. When updating to DirectX 9, the installation will overwrite any previous versions and you cannot remove it. However, there are many third party utilities available that will remove DirectX for you. These are useful in the event of a corrupt installation that does not work properly. A quick Google search for DirectX Uninstaller will give you what you need.
When downloading the DirectX program from Microsoft, you will notice that you are unable to save the files to your computer. This prevents you from saving the file and using it to install DirectX on another machine. If you have more than one machine that needs to be upgraded to DirectX 9, you will have to go to the Microsoft web site and download the installation each time you want to run it. If this is going to be a problem for you, there is a “redist” version available that includes all the files in one package.
On a side note, DirectX 9 cannot be updated on Windows NT and the latest version of DirectX that can be installed on Windows 98 or Windows ME operating systems is DirectX 8.1. This means that any programs that have been coded for DirectX 9 will not work on a Windows 98 or Windows ME machine. If this is the case, it may be time to upgrade your operating system.
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