Running sxstrace

  Diagnosing SideBySide failures
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Side-by-side technology is a standard for executable files in Microsoft Windows XP and later versions that attempts to reduce DLL hell. Side-by-side technology is also known as WinSxS or SxS. Executables that include an SxS manifest are designated SxS assemblies.
DLL hell designates a group of problems that arise from the use of dynamic-link libraries in Microsoft Windows. Problems include version conflicts, missing DLLs, duplicate DLLs, and incorrect or missing registration. In SxS, Windows stores multiple versions of a DLL in the WinSXS subdirectory of the Windows directory, and loads them on demand. This reduces dependency problems for applications that include an SxS manifest.
Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 and 2008 employ SxS with all C runtime libraries. However, runtime libraries in Visual C++ 2010 no longer use this technology; instead, they include the version number of a DLL in its file name, which means that different versions of one DLL will technically be completely different DLLs now.^[1][2]

• 1 Operation
• 2 Manifest format
  • 2.1 Example manifest
• 3 Advantages
• 4 Disadvantages
• 5 See also
• 6 Notes
• 7 External links