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?
This is easy to fix, but requires a bit of work in the registry.
So…
- Open the registry editor ‘Start - Run - regedit’ and press enter
- navigate to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
- Find the key named ‘VirtualDeviceDrivers’ and delete it
- Create a new Key named ‘VirtualDeviceDrivers’ (Capitals ARE important, and create in the same location)
- inside the new key create a new ‘Multi-String Value’ and name it VDD
- 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.

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.
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?
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
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.
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