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The DLL Killer
A utility for Windows programmers
by
Patrick Philippot, France
CIS : 72561, 3532
Public Domain Software
WARNING!! WARNING!! WARNING!! WARNING!! WARNING!! WARNING!!
This program is definitively not intended for end-users. It's a
debugging aid that should be used only by programmers and technical
support people.
KillDLL is a small utility that I have written for my own needs
and that may be useful to you. Here it is, free of charge and for use
at your own risk.
Why a DLL killer?
While writing the E! for Windows API (E! for Windows is a text
editor that we recently released as a shareware), I frequently found
myself with a main program (E!) that had hung because of a bug in the
extension DLL I was currently debugging.
So, the program terminated abnormally and could not unload all
the other extension DLLs it had loaded. The next time I wanted to run
E!, all these DLLs were still there and their initialization code was
not executed (it is executed only once when the DLL are first
loaded). This is of course a rather unsafe situation because E!
extension DLLs very often need to communicate with the running copy
of E! when they are installed. The only way to return to a safe
situation was to exit Windows and to launch it again.
I think this or similar situations can happen to you. That's why
I decided to make this small program available.
KillDLL allows you to unload an orphaned DLL without having to
exit Windows. An orphaned DLL is a DLL that has a non-zero usage count
but that is not likely to be unloaded by a call to FreeLibrary because
no further application is aware of it.
Run KillDLL. It will show you a small dialog box where all the
currently loaded DLLs are listed. Select the DLL you want to unload
and click on the "Kill" button. A warning message will be issued.
Click OK if you maintain your decision. The DLL list will be
automatically refreshed.
You can unload ANY DLL in the system. So, be sure of what you're
doing. You can even unload KERNEL! The result will be an immediate
exit from Windows.
KillDLL uses the FreeLibrary API to unload the DLL. So, the DLL
exit procedure will always be executed.
KillDLL uses undocumented information to be able to separate
DLLs from other modules. Thanks to "Undocumented Windows", the famous
book written by Schulman, Maxey and Pietrek. Be aware that this
program may not work with future versions of Windows.
KillDLL is a Public Domain software and nobody is allowed to
charge any amount of money for distributing KillDLL.
If you want any information about our E! editor for Windows
please contact me on Compuserve [72561,3532] or fax your request to:
Juergen Egeling Computer
Werderstr. 41, 7500 Karlsruhe, Germany.
Tel: (0721) 373832
Fax: (0721) 373842
Have fun!
Patrick Philippot
15/12/92