What happens to DLLs when you install a program?

[trichie]

Hello!

I would just like to confirm what happens when you install a program and the system informs you that DLLs in your system is outdated, and that they will be replaced by the one's from the installer. Does the installer actually overwrite the existing DLL, or does it alter the registry or whatever? How does this affect other installed programs in the system?

And does anybody know what the dll COMCTL32 do? Thanks!

 

[DarenNM]

I believe that the DLLs do get over-written. It could cause problems with other applications that can't use more recent versions of the DLL - it depends on whether the DLL has been written to be backwards-compatible I suppose. I think the various versions of Windows have different strategies for recovering from these kinds of issues. A search on MSDN should be able to turn up more information.

COMCTL32 is for the "Windows Common Controls".

Hope that helps

Daren


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