Using Depends To Detect Problems Loading Windows Modules

Depends.exe (Dependency Walker) is a software tool that scans Windows modules (e.g. DLL files) and builds a hierarchical tree diagram of all dependent modules. It is useful for troubleshooting system errors related to loading and executing modules. Dependency Walker detects many common application problems, such as missing DLL files. From time-to-time we may ask a customer to use it in order to help track down a problem we can not reproduce on one of our development machines. Depends is used only for diagnostic purposes and is perfectly safe to run — furthermore, it does not install any driver software.

Here is a link to the web page: Dependency Walker Page
Here is a link to the executable: Depends Executable

To use depends.exe, open a CMD window and navigate to the installation folder. For example, on a 64-bit machine this will be C:\Program Files (x86)\NutsAboutNets\, or on a 32-bit machine it will be C:\Program Files\NutsAboutNets\, where is the name of the application you are attempting to run (e.g. ClearWaves, TouchstonePro, Touchstone, etc). From the command line, issue the following command: “depends nan-rtl-lib.dll”

For example, for TouchstonePro the command line would look something like this:
C:\Program Files (x86)\NutsAboutNets\TouchstonePro> depends nan-rtl-lib.dll

Once the depends.exe window opens, then expand the view of the module paths by enabling the View / Full Paths feature, as shown below:

On the left-hand side, expand the hierarchical view of the modules — in particular, nan-rtl-lib.dll:

Send us a screenshot of the result (to support@NutsAboutNets.com) and please be sure it includes the hierarchical view of the modules and any errors that may be displayed.