Pyinstaller missing dll files

Question

I want to create a 32bit executable app from my script to run on Windows 10 with X86 or X64 architectures. I've generated the X64 version of my script and it worked fine. My host machine is X64 but I installed Python X86 version to generate X86 app. Then I generated the executable with Pyinstaller but when I run the executable it throws the following error:

C:\Users\Name\Appdata\local\Temp_MEI51162\VCRUNTIME140.dll is either not designed to run on Windows or it contains an error...

and in the console I see this error:

Error loading Python DLL 'C:\Users\Name\AppData\Local\Temp_MEI51162\python36.dll'. LoadLibrary:

I've checked the _MEI51162, both VCRUNTIME140.dll and python36.dll is there but the python36.dll has a size of about 1 MB instead of 3 MB. It doesn't matter if I generate the app as a standalone executable or not and still give me the same error.

Answer 1

It seems that the problem happens when you install both 32bit and 64bit of PyInstaller. And PyInstaller would fail on selecting which version of dependencies are required for the current build. The problem in my situation was VCRUNTIME140.dll. I couldn't find a way to replace the vcruntime140.dll, but I found a workaround by adding the correct file manually to C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\pyinstaller directory and rebuild with Pyinstaller then It will be replaced with the new one just copied. This will fix the issue temporary and the directory should not be deleted.