How to Free a Load-Time DLL?

Does anyone know to Free a Load-Time DLL?

When you load a DLL when your process is already running and has started up, you use the LoadLibrary function to load it, that is called Run-Time Dynamic Linking. And when you are done with the DLL, you don't need it anymore, you use the FreeLibrary function to unmap it from your address space.

But when you use a DLL at the beginning of your process, when it is starting up, you use the header files with the functions of your DLL and the .a file during compiling. Now you just can call the functions of your DLL in your program, that is called Load-Time Dynamic Linking. But when you don't need it anymore, somehow, how can you unmap the DLL from your address space? Using the FreeLibrary function doesn't work.

Thanks in advance, Ktulu.

You can do it with delayloaded dlls
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-US/library/96c1b5cf.aspx

I am using Dev-C++ and I don't have a Visual C++ 7.0 compiler. Isn't there any other way for Dev-C++?

I guess this awnser ends in a "You can't." or TerminateProcess, =\.

I think the question we should be asking you is "why to free a load-time DLL? (sic)".
Given the presence of dynamic linking that you've already described, why would you want to dismantle a static link?

You can stick your head out of a window on a train. But aside from a death wish, why?

To delete the DLL without terminating the process.

And why would you want to do this ? That sounds like you are trying to make something illegal there.

A load-time linked DLL is load-time linked because you have code that directly calls into that DLL. This code has absolutely no checking that this DLL is actually present: if it wasn't, the loader would already complain. Unloading a load-time linked DLL would therefore be a receipe for disaster: the next time the code in question is executed, it will jump into the memory where the DLL used to be. Probably by now it was unmapped and trying to execute it will result in an access violation.