Vista - Help for side-by-side config error...not written in Klingon

All, excuse my lack of computer knowledge but is there anyone out there who can dumb down an explantion or solution to the barrage of side by side config errors I just started getting whenever I try to run any application (e.g. Office or Photoshop)? I have literally scoured the posts/forums/internet looking for solutions and I think a lot of my problem is I don't know the lingo so the explanations look like they are writtien in Klingon. For instance, one suggestions was to run sxstrace.exe. How the heck do you do that? WHere do you do that? What do you do with the results? The example looked like a bunch of gobblygook was produced. I am sorry to drag this forum down, but maybe there are some tired experts out there tonight who are happy to use minimal brain effort to try to explain how I might resolve this. I appreciate any and all assistance!

Your humble amateur friend,

Betty

Betty, no worries, you sound just like my friend.

Can you explain the error with a little more detail? When does it occur, what you are doing when it happens? Perhaps a screenshot of the error?

~Lordbob

Side-by-side (SxS) is a mechanism whose purpose is to overcome a problem called "DLL Hell" which existed in older versions of Windows. Think of DLLs as application building blocks. In order to function, each app needs access to kernel32.dll, user32.dll, gdi32.dll, plus others which are app-specific. Let's pick mfc42u.dll as an example - many apps are reliant on that DLL, but the problem is (was) that there are many versions of mfc42u.dll, and they are sufficiently different to cause crashes and other problems when the wrong version is used.

For example, App1 is installed and it puts its own mfc42u.dll (version X) into the global system DLL repository, which is \windows\system32. App2 is then installed subsequently, and it also needs mfc42u.dll (version Y), so it goes and overwrites mfc42u.dll(X) with mfc42u.dll(Y). App2 is now fine but App1 crashes when you so much as look at it.

SxS allows for both X and Y (and Z) versions of DLLs to coexist on the same machine at the same time, so that in theory the user need never worry about DLL Hell any more.

Obviously, in your case something has gone badly wrong. My first thought is that you or someone on the same machine perhaps ran some type of "cleaner" or "optimiser" utility which attempted to recover HDD space and in doing so deleted a whole bunch of SxS config it shouldn't have been touching.

Can you recall any such "cleaning" action on your machine recently?

If this is the case, then a simple reinstall or repair of the victim program would fix this, no?

~Lordbob

P.S.H2SO4, I would give you rep for that above post, but it won't let me. Sorry. Thanks though.

More info needed, like you said (we were typing responses at the same time )

It's possible that a reinstall would help, but it's also possible that SxS metadata itself was wiped out or corrupted, so that mere app reinstallation will not put back what's missing.

Lordbob,

Thank you so much for getting back to me so quickly. I wish I could give you the screen shot but I can't copy it onto a word document because word won't open. (Or is there another way to get a screen shot?) And my favorite application to take a picture (Snagit) won't open either.

But this is what has happened starting yesterday ....out of the blue. I click on Outlook to do my email and get the error message: "The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log for more detail." This happened with every application....all Office apps, Photoshop etc. It is crazy. I was on the phone with Microsoft for over an hour last night and they wanted to take over my computer so they coud de-bug it, but the application we needed to load wouldn't even load so they couldn't do that either.

Something is goobering up my system big time (that is a technical term).

Again, thank you!

Betty

H2:

Wow...thank you for such a detailed explanation. No where have I seen it explained that way.

To answer your question, I am the only one who uses this computer and I didn't do any "cleaning" as you say. And the last thing I added was Photoshop plug ins about two weeks ago. My computer has worked fine till yesterday.


I even tried uninstalling Office and reinstalling it but got the same error message. The only way I have been able to get to my Office docs and Outlook is via Safe Mode. But when I did that, all the apps are blown up about 10 times their nomal size and I can't seem to adjust the settings as you would normally do when not in safe mode.

Sorry if this makes no sense. Now I feel like I am speaking Klingon...

Betty

Sorry, I am way behind you guys. Thank you for your continued responses.

So, is SxS config recoverable? Is this a fatal error?

And I also forgot to mention another error message I got when I tried to load Windows Media Center: microsoft.NET\framework\v2.0 etc/mscorwks.dll could not be loaded. That has never happened before. I suspect they are related issues? The gremlins in my system?

Betty

BTW, what are reps? And how do you give them?

As noted in my sig, rep is given by clicking the scales in the upper right hand corner of the post.

As for the SxS, try downloading and installing SP1 for Vista (update). You should already have it, but we will try anyways.

~Lordbob

As good an approach as any. If the symptom was SxS errors in one app, it might be worthwhile "sxstracing" and fiddling and attempting to troubleshoot, but since it's apparently "any" app, that effectively means that large portions of the OS installation are missing or otherwise unreachable, since the SxS component is literally almost half the OS, both in terms of physical size and relative importance.

Reapplying "Service Pack 1" for Vista may help, and it's a free download from Microsoft.