Ensure your Windows Applications run on Wine

November 18, 2011 · 3 min read

Wine is “the” way of running native Windows Applications under Linux based operating systems. Wine has replicated the Windows Libraries for providing an environment for Windows Apps to run on. But, the problems are the libraries themselves because they only replicate the original Libraries, it is not the Library itself. That causes programs to crash while running or refuse to run at all.

The issue: Libraries

If you don’t know what the word “Library” means in terms of computing, here is short intro: It is a pre-written code database that programmers can use to minimize their work hours. Windows has many libraries on which Windows Applications depend on. If the libraries do not exist, the program will not execute properly. Linux has it’s own base of libraries, but it is no good for Windows Applications. Have you ever seen files with “.dll” extensions? Well, those are the Libraries, the thing we’ve been talking about this long!

Wine can use Microsoft’s libraries directly, but it is not shipped with native MS libraries for legal issues. The fix is to import libraries manually. I am writing a short example tutorial on how to get your Application up and running on Wine in a few steps. Let’s begin!

Da’ Fix!

If nothing happens after double clicking on your applications executable, wait. Still nothing? Open up a Terminal, then drag and drop your desired executable file on to the Terminal and hit “Enter”.
You will see some text output from the terminal. Take a look at it. You may see something like this:

err:module:import_dll Library MSVBVM60.DLL (which is needed by L”C:\Program Files\Some\Thing.exe”) not found err:module:LdrInitializeThunk Main exe initialization for L”C:\Program Files\Some\Thing.exe” failed, status c0000135

Now, take a close look at the output. Does it mention anything about a missing library or DLL file? Yes, it does. We can clearly see that it has something to do with the DLL file “MSVBVM60.DLL”. We need that file for our program to work properly. (In this case, we need only one. Other situations might be different when you need multiple DLLs. Don’t worry, you’ll make your way through!)
We know that we need the “MSVBVM60.DLL” file. But, how can we get it? Browse to Google and search for the DLL you need. In this case, it is “MSVBVM60.DLL”. From the results, browse to the site “dll-files.com”. It is recommended to use this site for finding DLLs. After the page pops up with your desired DLL, click on the “Download zip file” option. Do not click on the big red fixer button even by mistake! Save the file on to your disk and open it.
Browse to Home>.wine>drive_c>Windows>system32. Copy the DLL and paste it over here. (If you can’t see a .wine folder, enable Viewing of hidden files by pressing Ctrl+H)
Now try to execute the file. It might just work. If not, repeat the process to see whether it needs more DLLs to work properly.

Finally, a few words. I don’t know whether there are more tutorials like this one on the net. I just discovered it this morning and couldn’t keep myself from sharing this with you.

Disclaimer: I do not bear any responsibilities for any thing that happens to you or your Machine for using my method.