How to fix DWMAPI.DLL delay-load dependency under WinXP?

Question

I have built a .dll under WinXP that claims it can\'t find DWMAPI.DLL when it\'s loaded. The problem is that this DLL is a Vista DLL, and this a known issue for XP users tha

Answer 1

I had exactly this problem.

Sneaky problem that took hours to solve.

Anyway. I compiled my managed C++ application on the release machine. Got complaints from customers that could not run it, worked like a charm on all of our machines.

It turned out that the release machine was automatically patched one night a month ago with the ATL vulnerability fix, and so was all other machines also, except one XP machine.

That particulare XP machine could not run the application either. Installed the ATL fix (see link below), and voilá, every thing worked just like before.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=766A6AF7-EC73-40FF-B072-9112BAB119C2&displaylang=en

So lesson learned, always check your intermediate manifests (found the in debug or release directory), that will tell you what version of the DLL that the program have been linked against.

Hope it helps anyone.