I knew I wasn't the only person having this tribulation, and since Microsoft didn't seem to be much help at the time (actually, it's not their fault, other than the fact that they created different files for the OSes), there needed to be an easy way for people to get a version that worked. I searched extensively for a version that would work to replace their new one, and after some trial and error, found a couple that did. I then created the web site, offering the newest one available. There were, and still are, a lot of folks (including several major companies) who are putting the NT version in their installation packages.

The table below, courtesy of Jerry Jackson (BCA Technologies, Inc.), details yet more nitty-gritty on the files.

Here is one of Brian Livingston's several InfoWorld articles on "DLL Hell", specifically devoted to the infamous Ctl3d32.dll.....

Many thanks to Bob Snyder at Black Moshannon Systems for the following information:

"I have discovered that the 2 versions of this file are actually designed to work with different operating systems. The error message shown on your web page appears when the NT version is installed on a Win95 system. A similar message appears when the Win95 version is installed on an NT system.

Visual C++ 5.0 contains a file called REDISTRB.WRI. This file lists:

ansi\ctl3d32.dll - 3D controls support DLL for Windows 95
ctl3d32.dll - 3D controls support DLL for Windows NT

Apparently, the Win95 version supports ANSI strings, and the NT version supports Unicode. When I examined these files on the C++ CD-ROM, they had the following properties:

Win95 (ANSI) version: Version 2.31.000 (26,624 bytes)
WinNT (Unicode) version: Version 2.31.000 (27,136 bytes)

In conclusion, it appears that neither of these files is inherently "buggy". You just have to make certain you're using the right one for your operating system. Many software vendors do not realize that there are 2 versions of this file, and ship only the version that was present on the machine used to create the setup disks. To make matters worse, Microsoft support staff do not seem to be aware of this issue. I placed 2 calls and spoke with 3 people. None of them could explain what was happening. It was only by searching my C drive for files containing "ctl3d32" that I happened to find the REDISTRB.WRI file containing the answers."

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