Visual studio redistributable & side-by-side / DependentAssembly error

Question

(I'm running Windows7 and using Visual Studio 2010.)

I'm using ClamAV in a .NET Azure project, and I'm running into side-by-side errors whenever I run clamd.exe, either through my code or by running clamd.exe on it's own.

In Visual Studio 2010 I am getting the error:

Win32Exception was unhandled The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log or use the command-line sxstrace.exe tool for more detail

And in Event Viewer I get:

Activation context generation failed for "C:\Users\pconerly\code\AntiVirus_source\WorkerRole\clamav\clamd.exe". Dependent Assembly Microsoft.VC80.CRT,processorArchitecture="x86",publicKeyToken="1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b",type="win32",version="8.0.50727.6195" could not be found. Please use sxstrace.exe for detailed diagnosis.

When I searched for "8.0.50727.6195" it led me to the 2005 redist, so I downloaded it http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=3387

After a restart I am still getting the side-by-side error. Additionally, I think that the redist installer is not completing it's install-- like it's seeing visual studio 2010 and saying "oh, that's good enough, no need for me to install". I haven't tried uninstalling 2010 and using 2005, because the rest of my Dev team is using VS 2010.

What's the deal? How can this be fixed? I'm ready to pull out my hair.

Answer 1

The version you mention is actually at found here

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 MFC Security Update

Answer 2

The link Timores posted is the update for Visual Studio. The actual redistributable package is this:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=26347

Answer 3

Timores is right: the redist should be this one, which is related to this KB entry As you can see there, msvcr80.dll has been updated to version 8.0.50727.6195. It is the "security update" of the "SP1" of the 2005 C++ runtime.. Your exe probably requires (through an internal manifest) that specific version.

If it is not found on the system (there's a lot of places searched for) nor in the current folder (with a suitable manifest aside) it won't load the exe since it is not able to "activate the context", that is load the specific DLL required in the manifest.

I had similar issues when my system got updated (windows updates) and the newly compiled EXEs were not working with an old-versioned runtime placed on the same folder. I had to update msvcr80.dll and its manifest (which I found deep in \windows\winsxs) to make everything work.

Context activation is a tricky matter, anyway :)

HTH