It’s highly likely that you’ll have experienced a DLL error at some point. Why? Because they’re some of the most common errors to receive on any Windows system.

DLL stands for Dynamic Link Library. The clue to their purpose is in the title. It’s the job of DLL files to link data in a way that can be accessed by more than one file. They act as library files to store procedures and basic information. When a piece of software wishes to use this, it will send a request and – usually – retrieve the information. But this isn’t always the case.

Due to the nature of applications sharing the same libraries of files, it’s a distinct possibility that the DLLs will become corrupt or out of date.

If one program requires a DLL update for example, the process can be easily automated by you or me. But what we might not realise is that the same file was being used by another application on the system! While we might have reconfigured the new program to find the DLL file, the old program won’t be able to trace it. This is just one of many scenarios where you’ll be returned with a rather ambiguous DLL error.

Here are a few that you can expect to see.

• A required .DLL file was not found. Unable to…
• The DLL File may be missing or corrupt.
• The following file has been replaced by an older version…

There are a couple of ways that you can go about fixing DLL errors, and it will very much depend on how automated you want the repair job to be.

The first option is to browse the Net and locate the DLL file that is giving you the problems. It’s done easily enough. DLLs are readily available across a wide number of websites (watch out for the merchants that try to sell you free fixes), and you can download them in a matter of seconds. Ensure that you re-configure the software to run off your new DLL files and you should be up and running.

It’s also possible to roll back the software changes that you’ve made since the error started appearing. Obviously, this isn’t ideal. We don’t want to be in the situation where we can’t upgrade our applications for fear of a stray DLL file.

The best solution is to download a free registry cleaning utility. These are specifically designed to check a system’s registry and sniff out any DLL files which have become corrupted or are no longer of use.

The registry cleaner will, more often than not, fix your DLL problems. If it isn’t able to, it should at least point you in the right direction by highlighting the source of the error.

It’s also a wise idea, as it always is, to keep your system protected with anti-Malware software. This can go a long way towards preventing those future corruptions of DLL files. For such tiny little libraries, they can have a quite devastating effect on the functionality of an application.

Browse the Net with anti-Virus protection and the latest firewall available. We’d also recommend keeping all of your software up to date in order to avoid situations where you have DLL files which are generations apart. This is much more likely to lead to errors on the application surface.