« Outlook 2007 not connecting to Exchange Server over VPN
Restart registry without rebooting »

16-Bit Windows Subsystem. An installable Virtual Device Driver failed Dll Initialization

Have you had an error along the lines of: 16-Bit Windows Subsystem. An installable Virtual Device Driver failed Dll Initialization?

Virtual Device Driver failed Dll Initialization

This is easy to fix, but requires a bit of work in the registry.

So…

  1. Open the registry editor ‘Start - Run - regedit’ and press enter
  2. navigate to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
  3. Find the key named ‘VirtualDeviceDrivers’ and delete it
  4. Create a new Key named ‘VirtualDeviceDrivers’ (Capitals ARE important, and create in the same location)
  5. inside the new key create a new ‘Multi-String Value’ and name it VDD
  6. Exit registry editor - you may need a restart.

That’s it! You should no longer get “16-Bit Windows Subsystem. An installable Virtual Device Driver failed Dll Initialization” popping up.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 10:01 am and is filed under Windows XP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


5 Responses to “16-Bit Windows Subsystem. An installable Virtual Device Driver failed Dll Initialization”

  1. rors Says:
    December 24th, 2008 at 1:27 am

    I did the above instructions but now it tells me that VirtualDeviceDrivers in registry is invalid
    Please help.

  2. admin Says:
    January 14th, 2009 at 1:17 pm

    Hi Rors,

    Sorry for the delay…

    It’s vital that the steps are followed exactly, including the capital letters. Have you got ‘VirtualDeviceDrivers’ as a key and ‘VDD’ as a multi-string value?

  3. Umut Says:
    March 9th, 2009 at 10:34 pm

    I got stuck on the 2nd part (navigate to HKLM\)
    I only get: HKEY

    SYSTEM INFORMATION:
    OS Name……Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
    Version……5.0.2195 Service Pack 4 Build 2195
    Processor….x86 Family 15 Model 2 stepping 9 GenuineIntel 266..
    Windows Directory…C:\WINNT
    Total Physical Memory..196,128KB
    Available Physical Memory…33,952KB
    Total Virtual Memory…715,176KB
    Available Virtual Memory…519,048KB

  4. admin Says:
    March 11th, 2009 at 3:20 pm

    Hi Umut,

    HKLM = HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

    I’ve not seen/tried this under Windows 2000 though, so I can’t confirm whether it will work.

    thanks.

  5. Bob Says:
    August 22nd, 2009 at 11:18 pm

    I can’t even open regedit (due to the same error), so I don’t know how I should go about doing this

Leave a Reply