In our computer, the usual thing is to install all kinds of programs that generally must work correctly. But surely, on some occasion, when executing it, we get an error message that tells us that it cannot be started because a .dll file is missing or because it is corrupt. To fix it, you may just need to download it from any website and move it to the system folder. However, this solution can also lead to a bigger problem.
Many users are unaware of the dangers involved in trying to fix the problems of a missing .dll file by downloading it from the Internet. And it is that this practice that may seem harmless and thanks to which we can solve the lack of a file can pose a danger to our Windows PC.
Dangers when downloading DLL files from the Internet
DLL files (acronym for Dynamic Link Library) are files full of instructions that are used by the different programs that are part of our operating system and that will allow them to perform certain actions when necessary. Its main objective is to modularize the code so that it can be reused by any software. For example, programmers use it to avoid having to include all the code in a main program. What they do is separate them into .dll files creating the different libraries. The moment any of these files is missing, the program is incomplete and cannot be run . For this reason, the error appears when we try to launch the program when it does not find any .dll file.
To solve the problem, we may think of downloading the necessary .dll file from the Internet, which is not recommended in terms of security. First, because we are downloading these files from unknown sites from untried or untrusted sources. It may be an old, incomplete, or vulnerable version. In addition, each .dll file is integrated into the software so that its download will only be reliable if it is done from the developer’s website .
Nor can we ignore the possibility that these files downloaded from unsafe sites do not have a guarantee that the file may be infected with viruses or Trojans. If they are, they can endanger the security of the system, allowing us to open a hole that allows us to be attacked by computer attacks. Although luckily, if we use Windows Defender, it can protect us from these malicious libraries, the truth is that this type of downloads is not recommended.
Fix a missing DLL the right way
As we have seen, if we have problems with a .dll file, the idea of downloading it from any website, other than the developer’s own website, is a bad practice that we should not carry out. Instead, Windows offers us a tool like SFC that will allow us to check the integrity of the system, being able to know if we have damaged libraries. It is only necessary to run the Command Prompt with administrator rights and execute the command:
sfc /scannow
We can also choose to solve the problem by installing the latest version of DirectX, Microsoft Visual C ++ Reditributable. With this we can get the missing or corrupt .dll file to be reinstalled.
