If depends.exe (Dependency Walker) Hangs

Dependency Walker is probably the best util that builds a hierarchical tree diagram of all dependent modules of windows .exe or .dll files. It can be useful for debugging, troubleshooting, or optimizing your applications. It also shows you all the functions that are exported and imported by each module, and which ones are actually used by other modules.

Dependency Walker supports various types of module dependencies, such as implicit, explicit, dynamic, delay-load, and side-by-side. It can also detect many common application problems, such as missing modules, invalid modules, circular dependency errors, mismatched machine types of modules, and module initialization failures.

To fix the problem of the program hanging, you need to adjust the module search order settings. Here are the steps to do that:

  • Open the program as usual, but don’t perform any other actions yet.
  • Go to the “Options” menu and select “Configure Module Search Order”.
  • If the view is too cluttered, click on the “Expand” button to collapse the details.
  • Use the “«” button to remove all the items from the module search order list, except for two: the system’s “KnownDLLs” list and the application directory. These are the only ones you need for the program to work properly.
  • Click on “OK” to save the changes and exit the menu.

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Now you can use the program without any issues. Hope this helps!


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