issue with manifest file

[Ian Lochray]

I have an application which consists of many stand alone executables, each of which has an associated manifest file. The applications all work fine when installed on a new server exsept for one circumstance.
One of the executables was initially delivered without its manifest file. It failed with a dll missing error (msvc90.dll which it uses). I subsequently copied the manifest file in to the application folder but it still fails.
Now here's the strange thing - if I rename the application folder, it works fine. If I copy the .exe and the manifest file to another folder and run it there it works fine. It only fails when run from the folder it was initially installed into. It's as if the O/S has remembered the initial invocation and keeps failing because of that.
Is there a way of refreshing any cached manifest information if that's the problem?

[Rune J. Winje]

Might be a side-effect of Windows Superfetch/Prefetch.

First time an app is started the app and manifest may be cached and thus the OS does not look for a manifest unless the app changes location or timestamp.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefetcher
"pplication trace files are a concatenation of the application's executable name, a hyphen, a hexadecimal representation of the hash of the path the file resides in, and a ".pf" extension"

Might be worth looking for the apps .pf file(s) and delete them from the Windows\Prefetch folder.


Cheers,
Rune

[Ian Lochray]

The answer sounds like exactly the solution I am loking for. The only problem is that I can't find the prefetch folder or the .pf file. I am on Windows 2008 R2, could they be called something different there or located somewhere else?
I have managed to get round the problem by following one of your suggestions. By updating the timestamp on the file it now works.