Knowledge Base |

# PRB: CodeView Displays "Bad DLL Format in 'Filename'"

Article ID: 105118

Article Last Modified on 10/23/2003

APPLIES TO

- Microsoft CodeView for MS-DOS
- Microsoft CodeView 4.1

This article was previously published under Q105118

## SYMPTOMS

When starting CodeView, or when CodeView loads a program to debug, the following message is displayed:
Bad DLL Format in 'path\filename'

## CAUSE

Here are four of the most common reasons for this message (resolutions to each of the causes is shown below):

1. There are not enough free file handles.
2. There is not enough available memory.
3. A dynamic-link library (DLL) from a previous version of CodeView is being loaded.
4. CodeView is trying to load an expression evaluator for a different operating system.

## RESOLUTION

To work around each problem:

1. Check available file handles, using STRESS.EXE. There should be a minimum of six available file handles. If there are too few handles, shut down an application and retry, or increase the "FILES=" entry in the CONFIG.SYS file.
2. CodeView can be run with as little as 2 megabytes (MB)of memory, although more is recommended. Use STRESS for Windows, MEM for MS-DOS, or some other memory utility to find out how much memory is available. Shut down other applications and remove any unnecessary terminate-and- stay-resident (TSR) programs.
3. This happens most commonly when upgrading from C/C++ 7.0 to Visual C++ 1.0, without removing C/C++ 7.0. The CodeView DLLs are still in the path. Unlike CodeView for Windows, CodeView for MS-DOS looks for DLLs in the path first. So, for example, CodeView 4.1 might find a 4.0 DLL and try to load it, resulting in an error. To eliminate this problem, remove the path entry pointing to the C700 directory, remove C700, or rename the offending DLL to something else.
4. Attempting to have CodeView for Windows load one of the MS-DOS expression evaluators through an Eval statement in the [CVW] section of the TOOLS.INI file will also cause the "Bad DLL format in 'filename'" error to be displayed. "Filename" is the name of the expression evaluator that CodeView for Windows is trying to load, and will be either EED1CAN.DLL or EED1CXX.DLL. The message is issued immediately after the file to be debugged has been specified. This is discussed in more detail in the Knowledge Base (KB) article 87922.

## MORE INFORMATION

CodeView version 4.0 introduces a new, flexible architecture for the debugger. CodeView is composed of a main executable program, CV.EXE (CodeView for MS-DOS) or CVW.EXE (CodeView for Windows) and a collection of dynamic-link libraries. Each DLL implements an aspect of the debugging process. For more information on this architecture, see the CodeView documentation.

Additional query words: 4.00 4.10

Keywords: kberrmsg kbbug kbdebug kbprb KB105118