Question

I’ve a vmware image with windows 7 and a program needs winring0 dll but when I start the program I get the error message: I cannot initialize winring0 dll but my program works in native Windows 7? Is this a known problem with a vmware image? How can I initialize winring0 in vmware image? In my folder there is winring0 dll for 32 bit and 64 bit.

Answer 1

Basically, you are attempting to find information about your hardware on virtual hardware. This concept alone is likely to be full of problems.

VMware utilizes Binary Translation(See here) to execute privileged instructions in the kernel if your processor does not support VT-x (assuming intel) . It is quite possible that it was unable to properly translate the file when attempting to load, due to the fact that the dll very well may contain instructions that vmware was not built to translate, or non-virtualizable instructions, at which point it would fail to initialize. If your processor does support hypervisor assist technology (VT-x or Pacifica), further research may be required. See Here for a high level of overview of how VMware works.

Finally, as a last ditch attempt, the dll may require that it load into a specific memory address which conflicts with VMware memory spaces, at which point it would fail to initialize as well. Like said, being inside of vmware increases the complexity of this problem.