Using Dependency Walker for General Information about Modules

Dependency Walker is more than just a troubleshooting utility. It also provides a great deal of valuable information about the module layout of a particular application and details on each module. Dependency Walker provides the following information:

A complete module dependency tree diagram of all the modules required by a particular application.

A list of all functions exported from each module. These lists include functions exported by name, functions exported by ordinal, and functions that are actually forwarded to other modules. Named C++ functions can be shown in their native decorated format, or can be expanded into human readable function prototypes including return types and parameters types.

A list of functions that are actually called in each module by other modules. These lists can help developers understand why a particular module is being linked with an application, and also provides information on how to remove unneeded modules from being dependencies.

A list of the minimum set of files that are required in order for a module to load and run. This list can be very useful when copying files to another computer or creating setup scripts.

For each individual module found, the following information is provided...

Full path to the module file. Date and time of the module file. Date and time the module was actually built. Size of the module file. Attributes of the module file. The module checksum from when the module was built. The actual module checksum. Type of CPU that the module was built for. Type of subsystem that the module was built to run in. Type of debugging symbols that are associated with the module. The preferred base load address of the module. The actual base load address of the module. The virtual size of the module. The load order of the module with respect to other modules. The file version found in the module's version resource. The product version found in the module's version resource. The image version found in the module's file header. The version of the linker that was used to create the module file. The version of the OS that the module file was built to run on. The version of the subsystem that the module file was built to run in. A possible error message if any error occurred while processing the file.