Archive for July 13, 2008

When an application starts, windows loads the necessary dll files to the system memory – “in required order”. But how to get the dll load order of perticular application? You’ve already seen – When we start the application via debugger, it will output the module load order info to the watch window. Have a look at it,

Loaded 'ntdll.dll', no matching symbolic information found.
Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\kernel32.dll', no matching symbolic information found.
Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\dbghelp.dll', no matching symbolic information found.
Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\msvcrt.dll', no matching symbolic information found.
Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\advapi32.dll', no matching symbolic information found.
Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\rpcrt4.dll', no matching symbolic information found.
Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\mfc42.dll', no matching symbolic information found.
Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\user32.dll', no matching symbolic information found.
Loaded 'C:\Windows\System32\gdi32.dll', no matching symbolic information found.

Seems Good! But, is there any easy method?

Yes! Take menu item, Debug -> Modules. And it will show the dialog of all loaded modules. By default the modules are sorted in load order. See the screenshot.

Now you don’t need to jump into that watch window for searching the module load order.

Targeted Audience – Beginners.