C++ DX11 application only runs in Visual Studio IDE

4
votes

Alright, I presented this question on the MSDN forums but have yet to receive any kind of response so I figured I'd give StackOverflow a try.

I'm currently developing a DirectX application using VS2008 on Win7. I recently experienced a nasty memory corruption bug with a memory allocation class that grabbed byte aligned memory. During this bug I could still run the debug and release executables however it would crash due the instructions getting corrupted or whatever, but it would still execute for a bit until the crash.

I then stripped out the entire memory allocation class. The application runs perfectly in the IDE (release and debug builds) but I can't run any of the executables at all. They immediately crash with a non-responding/stop working error. And I don't think it is my environment because I get the same issue on another computer that wasn't having problems before either.

Dependency walker gives a "Warning: At least one delay-load dependency module was not found. Warning: At least one module has an unresolved import due to a missing export function in a delay-load dependent module." error and indicates that GPSVC.dll and IESHIMS.DLL can't be found. I've read that this can be misleading and just indicates a potential problem somewhere. And Dependency walker wasn't giving me this error the day before.

I haven't tinkered with any of the configuration or project settings or added new code. Any idea of what could be causing this behavior?

Also another note, I installed the Windows 7.1 sdk the same day. Think this could be some kind of compiler related bug?

Just in case some useful information pops up on the MSDN post, here is the link http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-IE/vsdebug/thread/f692b394-8af2-4453-991c-aa6a443a9019

Thanks!

Edit -

Here is the last couple lines of Dependency Walker's profiling output

GetProcAddress(0x76CD0000 [c:\windows\syswow64\KERNEL32.DLL], "DecodePointer") called from "c:\windows\syswow64\NVWGF2UM.DLL" at address 0x6D8BAE4F and returned 0x77B59D65. GetProcAddress(0x76CD0000 [c:\windows\syswow64\KERNEL32.DLL], "DecodePointer") called from "c:\windows\syswow64\NVWGF2UM.DLL" at address 0x6D8BAE4F and returned 0x77B59D65. GetProcAddress(0x76CD0000 [c:\windows\syswow64\KERNEL32.DLL], "EncodePointer") called from "c:\windows\syswow64\NVWGF2UM.DLL" at address 0x6D8BAF60 and returned 0x77B60FDB. GetProcAddress(0x76CD0000 [c:\windows\syswow64\KERNEL32.DLL], "DecodePointer") called from "c:\windows\syswow64\NVWGF2UM.DLL" at address 0x6D8BAF70 and returned 0x77B59D65. Second chance exception 0xC0000005 (Access Violation) occurred in "c:\users\joel\desktop\DXAPP.EXE" at address 0x0110152E. Exited "c:\users\joel\desktop\DXAPP.EXE" (process 0x27D8) with code 255 (0xFF).

Is this referring to a DLL grabbing a null pointer or to my actual instructions? Going to read up on how to use WinDbg real quick and I'll post it's output if this doesn't shed any immediate light on the issue.

Edit 2 -

Simply running the application and hitting debug to bring up Visual Studio consistently brought me to where I'm compiling my shaders. I'm assuming at the moment that the root of the problem lies around this. However, I still don't understand the change of behavior during execution between using the IDE and not.

Solution! -

I was so thrown off by the previous memory corruption bug that I didn't realize my shaders weren't in a local directory to the executables. This in turn was generating a null pointer that wasn't handled properly after calling D3DX11CompileFromFile().

1
c++visual-studiocrash
get dependency walker make sure it can see all the dll you need. – Martin York
Yeah I did, check out the 4th paragraph. Also no new libraries or DLLs were added. – Joel
I doubt you need gpsvc.dll or ieshims.dll in your app. If you can't run the output executable on the same machine that can run them from the IDE then your compiler and linker command line may have some insight. Care to post that here? – AJG85
Oh and to state the obvious ... you do have the DirectX runtime installed on the machine right? – AJG85
Can you find out till what point your application "executes" before it crashes outside the IDE? If it crashes before any of "your" code executes than its definitely to do with how code is loaded and the dependent dlls are brought into memory. – Jaywalker

1 Answers

0
votes

Shoot, sorry I meant to post this as a comment...

I can only suggest more diagnostic attempts.

One would be to profile the app from within Depends, this will also show dynamic DLL loads and might show something new. Also it captures the debug output. It may behave differently than launching in the debugger itself and provide a clue. You don't mention actually profiling so I thought I'd suggest it in case you hadn't. Also, pay very close attention to the paths for the DLL's loaded - you might be surprised at a DLL loading from a location other than you intended.

Another suggestion is to try at attach to the stopped app after the crash (before dismissing the error dialog). See if you can get a stack trace or anything out of it.

Finally try attaching (or even launching from) WindDbg rather than the IDE. Like the Depends profile, the difference in debugger behavior and how it hooks the app may allow the crash to happen, while providing the clues you need.

Good Luck!