[SOLVED] How to determine why a program no longer runs

[Larry Sabo]

My apologies for such an off-topic question but a game I play daily no longer runs on my main PC (Win 10 Pro) but continues to run on a Win 10 Home laptop I also have. It ran fine until a few days ago when my system crashed while cloning a drive using Macrium Reflect. I restored a drive image made a week earlier and I have not had any issues with other programs. SFC and chkdsk say all is good. Windows is right up-to-date. Reinstalling the game completes okay but the game still won't run.

I tried compatibility mode, running the program as Admin and under all previous Win versions but no joy. Dependency walker lists a ton of missing DLLs which suggest to me that a Visual Runtime version has been corrupted/deleted. EXE/DLL properties indicate that it depends on Visual Studio 2008 but that and its updates are already installed. When I try to download V.S. 2008 and its updates again, I get redirected to an Azure developer's registration page??? I believe that trying to install V.S. 2008 again will be frustrated by its discontinued support and the presence of newer runtime updates. When I try to open the program, a busy icon suggests that it's loading for a few seconds but it closes with nothing related running in Task Manager.

Any advice? Google has been unhelpful so far.

 

[Porthos]

Does this happen to be the old win7 version of Majong?

 

[NviGate Systems]

I think I have an offline version of the 2008 libraries, both 32 and 64 I could send you. I will look tomorrow, but send me a private message to find me and we can see how big the files are.

This is the Visual Basic libraries right?

 

[trevm999]

It sounds the the entries in your screenshot isn't your problem

Dependency Walker: missing dlls

I have been trying to resolve .dll dependencies for the executable file with Dependency Walker. Currently, I am getting missing .dlls in the following form: API-MS-WIN-XXX EXT-MS-WIN-XXX For exa...

stackoverflow.com

The linked discussion mentioned a newer tool or just ignoring most of the entries

GitHub - lucasg/Dependencies: A rewrite of the old legacy software "depends.exe" in C# for Windows devs to troubleshoot dll load dependencies issues.

A rewrite of the old legacy software "depends.exe" in C# for Windows devs to troubleshoot dll load dependencies issues. - lucasg/Dependencies

github.com

Personally, I've always used Process Monitor to figure out what is wrong

 

[Markverhyden]

Have you done a search to see if those missing dll's are in fact not present?

What does dependency walker say on the machine where it works?

What does event viewer say when trying to run it?

Try adding a new user to see what happens.

If it was me I'd try running Tweaking AIO. The pivot point on this is the crash. When you did the restore was it to a clean drive?

 

[Larry Sabo]

Does this happen to be the old win7 version of Majong?

It's the Mahjong game that's part of the Win 7-8 games for Windows 10, aka Mahjong Titans. I can't find an alternative that has as clear graphics on the chips, nor is fun to play. I love the mental challenge and entertainment value the game presents, and keep struggling to win over 29% of the times played. I can't resume my progress until I resolve the problem. I may just restore an earlier drive image to see if that cures it.

 

[Larry Sabo]

This is the Visual Basic libraries right?

Thanks kindly for the offer. Yes the Visual Basic libraries downloadable (except for 2008) from here.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Personally, I've always used Process Monitor to figure out what is wrong

Thanks for the link, which I'll read after snow-blowing the drive. I ran Process Monitor but as the Mahjong program is not running, I can't figure out how to trace the process and star the program at the same time. I start the program and switch to process monitor but of course by then it's no longer running.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Have you done a search to see if those missing dll's are in fact not present?

What does dependency walker say on the machine where it works?

What does event viewer say when trying to run it?

Try adding a new user to see what happens.

If it was me I'd try running Tweaking AIO. The pivot point on this is the crash. When you did the restore was it to a clean drive?

1. Thanks for the thoughtful questions, Mark. No, haven't tried looking for the missing DLLs, I just took Dependency Walker's error message at face value, that DLLs were missing or at least couldn't be found.

2. Haven't tried Dependence Walker on the PC that does run the program, but will (even though I expect to be bamboozled doing so).

3. Reliability History shows the following.


4. Good suggestion re. new user. I'll try that.

5. I thought about Tweeking but it has proved to be of little help the many recent times I've used it on other problems so I haven't tried it. I will.

It's the same drive -- a W 250GB SSD. I cloned it to an identical drive to have handy so I could just connect it in case of a drive failure and be back up and running faster than booting a WinPE and restoring an image. Had to leave for dinner while it was still running and came back to see the system had crashed with error notifications I didn't record. I suspect it had something to do with conflicting drive signatures because the clone and original drive were both connected but that's just speculation and hasn't happened other times. I'll try again but wait until it finishes or crashes again.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Try adding a new user to see what happens.

BINGO! That's the first thing I tried after snow-blowing the drive and the game works! Now, how to transfer the corrupted account settings and data when there is insufficient room left on the SSD. That should be easy enough.

Thanks to all for the many suggestions!

 

[Larry Sabo]

Just to follow-up, after transferring the old profile to the new one using Fabs, I examined the contents of old user profile AppData\Low\Microsoft Games\Mahjong and found that there was a back-up of the contained xml files created when the program still worked properly. When I restored them from the back-up, the game worked normally again and I have my hard-earned statistics back.

 

[trevm999]

Thanks for the link, which I'll read after snow-blowing the drive. I ran Process Monitor but as the Mahjong program is not running, I can't figure out how to trace the process and star the program at the same time. I start the program and switch to process monitor but of course by then it's no longer running.

For future reference,

What I would do is add a process name filter in process monitor for mahjong.exe, then start capturing. Run mahjong, then go back to process monitor and pause the capture and look through the entries.