What does error code 0xc0000135 mean when starting a .NET application?

Question

Symptom is that the application starts correctly on the majority of PCs (Windows 7 and XP) at the user's site, but on one machine it consistently fails to start with the error "The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135)". What's the issue?

Answer 1

From the ntstatus.h SDK header file:

//
// MessageId: STATUS_DLL_NOT_FOUND
//
// MessageText:
//
// The program can't start because %hs is missing from your computer. 
// Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.
//
#define STATUS_DLL_NOT_FOUND             ((NTSTATUS)0xC0000135L)    // winnt

The "try reinstalling the program" advice is solid, it is however up to you to figure out exactly what needs to be installed. If you have no idea whatsoever then use SysInternals' ProcMon utility, you'll see Windows searching for the DLL and failing to find it. The name of the DLL should be a good lead. If it is mscoree.dll then you forgot to install .NET on the target machine.