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Hacks &Ramblings &windows 7 Jl. on 05 Jan 2010 03:21 pm

vLite and Win7 RTM – wimgapi.dll not compatible.

So, vLite out of the box (or extracted download, as it were) requires three files to run – wimgapi.dll, wimfltr.inf, and wimfltr.sys (wimfltr.inf is a driver file that requires .sys).

The interesting thing about Win7 and vLite is that Win7 already has wimgapi.dll in c:\windows\system32 (or syswow64, I presume).

“Neat!” thinks I, and copies that to the c:\windows\program files\vlite directory, and pulls wimfltr.inf and wimfltr.sys from another server I have with the WAIK on it. I run Vlite. It runs slow, but runs. I configure my install source, it runs slow, but runs. I get to modifying my install source (removing components), it runs VERY slow, then crashes. Consistently. Changing options, running as admin, running in a compatibility layer, all return crashes after it runs.

Turns out vLite does NOT like the wimgapi.dll that comes with Win7. So, moral of the story folks – use all the same versions from the same source.  In my case, I pulled them from c:\program files\windows aik\Tools\x86.  In your case, unless you’ve downloaded the 2gb WAIK iso, you’ll need to find them from Google or Bing.  Distribution is apparently some form of international terrorism.

From the WAIK I’d installed, these were files modified 11/1/2006 and 11/2/2006 . As soon as I replaced wimgapi.dll in the C:\Program Files\vLite\ directory with the older version  (replacing the one from 7/9/2009, with the one from 11/1/2006) vLite screamed to life and ran as expected and followed all the way through without a single crash.

This was, needless to say, a relief.  Happy trails.

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