Side-by-side assembly conflict still exists in application manifest

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

Audacity 2.3.2
There are earlier discussions about this (from 2018)
https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/updating-to-2-2-1-and-win10/48140/1
As seen by the details of the event below, the problem still seems to exist.
This is not meaningless as this interferes with other 32-bit applications installed on my machine.

Log Name: Application
Source: SideBySide
Date: 07/17/2019 12:53:59 PM
Event ID: 78
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: xxxxxx
Description:
Activation context generation failed for “C:\Program Files (x86)\Audacity\audacity.exe”.Error in manifest or policy file “” on line . A component version required by the application conflicts with another component version already active. Conflicting components are:. Component 1: C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\manifests\amd64_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.17134.885_none_fb42a3473065565f.manifest. Component 2: C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\manifests\x86_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.17134.885_none_42efda1e44e17f65.manifest.
Event Xml:



78
2
0
0x80000000000000

95691
Application
BRS-DEV01.internal.brssystems.local



C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\manifests\amd64_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.17134.885_none_fb42a3473065565f.manifest
C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\manifests\x86_microsoft.windows.common-controls_6595b64144ccf1df_6.0.17134.885_none_42efda1e44e17f65.manifest
















C:\Program Files (x86)\Audacity\audacity.exe



















2

Thanks for the report. I have reopened the issue on Audacity’s bug tracker.

In what way?
Which other applications?

3

The manifest for one application should not have any effect on any other applications, so there is something more complicated going on here.

I downloaded and extracted the manifest from Audacity 2.3.2 with the mt tool (“mt -inputresource:audacity.exe;#1 -out:\temp\manifest.txt”): The result looks reasonable; there is no reference to the AMD64 version of the Common Controls library (the problem that Audacity used to have was that there were two conflicting “AssemblyIdentity” elements in Audacity’s manifest):

<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0">
  <assemblyIdentity version="2.3.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" name="Audacity.Audacity.Audacity" type="win32"></assemblyIdentity>
  <description>Audacity Cross-Platform Sound Editor</description>
  <trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">
    <security>
      <requestedPrivileges>
        <requestedExecutionLevel level="asInvoker" uiAccess="false"></requestedExecutionLevel>
      </requestedPrivileges>
    </security>
  </trustInfo>
  <dependency>
    <dependentAssembly>
      <assemblyIdentity type="win32" name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls" version="6.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df" language="*"></assemblyIdentity>
    </dependentAssembly>
  </dependency>
</assembly>

However, it appears something on you system is asking for the AMD64 version of that library. Are you loading any plugins? Does starting and stopping Audacity without doing anything else cause this event to be added to the log? Could you have some Windows Explorer extension installed (that might get pulled in when doing something that opens a File dialog)?

There is a Microsoft tool called “sxstrace” that can provide more detailed information. If you open a shell as an Administrator, run “sxstrace trace -logfile:\temp\sxstrace.etl” (you may need to adjust the path to something other than “\temp”, as appropriate for your system), start Audacity and do what–if anything–you need to do to get the problem to happen, then hit “Enter” in the shell to stop sxstrace. To convert the ETL file to something easier to read, run “sxstrace parse -logfile:\temp\sxstrace.etl -outfile:\temp\sxstrace.txt”. Post the resulting .txt file and it should hopefully shed more light on what is going wrong.