I made a little test app that just displays a few message boxes, and fiddled with the Release configuration settings to see how small the EXE could be. I have yet to check how small it became (and ofcourse it would be minimal no matter what settings I had used, this is a bit a peculiar experiment by a peculiar person I admit) but the intriguing thing is that in the output I see:
Code:
'Test.exe': Loaded 'D:\Apps\Test\Release\Test.exe', No symbols loaded.
'Test.exe': Loaded 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntdll.dll', No symbols loaded.
'Test.exe': Loaded 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\kernel32.dll', No symbols loaded.
'Test.exe': Loaded 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\user32.dll', No symbols loaded.
'Test.exe': Loaded 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\gdi32.dll', No symbols loaded.
'Test.exe': Loaded 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\uxtheme.dll', No symbols loaded.
'Test.exe': Loaded 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\msvcrt.dll', No symbols loaded.
'Test.exe': Loaded 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\advapi32.dll', No symbols loaded.
'Test.exe': Loaded 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\rpcrt4.dll', No symbols loaded.
'Test.exe': Loaded 'C:\Program Files\MouseWare\system\LgWndHk.dll', No symbols loaded.
'Test.exe': Loaded 'C:\Program Files\MessengerPlus! 3\MsgPlusLoader.dll', No symbols loaded.
'Test.exe': Loaded 'C:\Program Files\iTouch\iTouch\itchhk.dll', No symbols loaded.
'Test.exe': Loaded 'C:\Program Files\Common Files\Logitech\Scrolling\LGMSGHK.DLL', No symbols loaded.
'Test.exe': Loaded 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\version.dll', No symbols loaded.
'Test.exe': Unloaded 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\version.dll'
'Test.exe': Loaded 'C:\Program Files\Copernic\CopernicDesktopSearchSystem740.dll', No symbols loaded.
As you see all kinds of DLLs appear to be loaded by my app, only a few of which are Windows system ones. Why is this?