Thread: Strange bunch of DLLs loaded

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?

As well as the DLLs actually linked to your program, other DLLs that are referred to by the linked DLLs as well as DLLs specified in the registry as being loaded on a program's startup will be loaded into your program's process at startup.

I wouldn't worry about this too much, although if you think that startup time is adversely affected by these DLLs you could uninstalling them (Some appear to be to do with your Logitech mouse, there's a "desktop search engine" there, etc.)