Software Bisque Knowledge Base Article – 147

DEVICE NOT FUNCTIONING

ISSUE

On launching TheSky (or other application), error message displayed:
“A device attached to the system is not functioning.”
May also show the following (or similar):
“C:/Program Files/Software Bisque/CCDSoft/CCDSoft.exe Missing export in DSS_DLL.DLL AMDPOS.”
-or-
“C:/Windows/System/(FILENAME).DLL appears to be corrupt.”

RESOLUTION

An outdated dynamic-link library is present somewhere on the system. This issue is commonly referred to as “DLL Hell” and is one of the most fundamental problems plaguing the Windows OS today. Many disparate issues can affect the solution and are beyond the scope of this technical support solution.

Background:
By convention, in Windows 95/98/NT4.0, dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) essentially come in two flavors: Shared DLLs and Common DLLs. Shared DLLs are files that are shared between multiple applications (e.g. MFC40.dll and MSVCRT40.dll). Common DLLs are files that are used by a specific application. Each flavor is placed in a different location on the user’s hard disk upon installation. Shared DLLs are placed in the Windows System folder (typically C:/Windows/System on Windows 95/98 machines and C:/Winnt/System32 on Windows NT) and Common Files are placed in the System folder in the Common Files folder (typically C:/Program Files/Common Files). These folders are determined during installation.

The above conventions are not applicable to Windows NT 5.0.

In-a-nutshell solution:
1. Locate all occurrences of the offending DLL files listed in the error message (if there is one listed).
2. Determine the latest version of the DLL. Typically, the DLL with the latest date is the latest version, but this is not always the case. Some DLLs contain version information and by right-clicking on the DLL file itself, then clicking the Properties command, the exact version number can be determined.
3. Remove the outdated DLL and replace it with the newer version.

This problem can occur:

1. After installing the application under Windows 3.1, then upgrading to Windows 95/98/NT and re-installing.
2. By installing third-party software that does not follow the Windows 95/98/NT logo conventions and incorrectly distributes shared files.
3. If the Path environment variable contains a path to the folder that holds the outdated DLL, the OS can attempt to load the older DLL before loading a newer version of the same DLL, even though the newer DLL is in its correct location on the hard drive.

APPLIES TO

General

KEYWORDS

SBKB

This article was formerly published under the identifier Q309KB in Software Bisque’s prior knowledge base.

Last Reviewed: 11/24/2004