What’s the deal with DLLs? These little, quizzical, unassuming little files seem to exist in thousands upon thousands on your hard disk, eating up precious space where you could have stored a couple more movies or installed a few more programs. Well, sure hard disk space is cheap nowadays, but still that’s no excuse for throwing it away. You might even be tempted to delete some or all of them and see if your computer notices. Don’t make a mistake – if you so much as touch them, your operating system may stop working at least temporarily. Depending on the extent of the damage you perpetrate, you may even have to do a complete re-install. Digital real estate is cheap; let these untouchables set up their own ghetto somewhere out of the way on your hard disk, and then just forget about them. You don’t ever have to go there or hold their hands; they wouldn’t really mind if you didn’t. That’s really the best way to handle DLL files – don’t handle them at all.

What are DLLs and why are they so important?

Well, if you really want to know, they’re like libraries. That’s where they get their name from – Dynamic Link Library.

Several programs inside Microsoft Windows share similarities with each other, and have a lot in common. When creating programs for an operating system, it often makes sense not to build those common part into each program separately, over and over again. That would be an awful waste of space, time and other resources. The best way to do it would be to put the common parts in a separate place, and have each program refer to them as and when needed.

It’s quite like a real-life book-lending library, really. Or a common volume used by everyone in a household. Does it make sense to keep one copy of the same book with every member of a family? Surely one per house is enough, unless of course it’s the latest craze and everyone wants to read it at once. Whoever needs it can go to the shelf, take it down, use it and put it back.
That’s exactly how it works with DLLs. What they’re doing is the complete opposite of occupying space – they actually save you lots of space by unifying information. Without them, programs would be much, much larger than they actually are. If there are four members in your family, imagine multiplying the number of books in your house by four – one copy of each book for each member. Yes, including the telephone directory.

That would be the condition of your hard disk if DLLs weren’t there to take care of things. So they are good critters, really. Step lightly around them and leave them in peace. Hopefully, they’ll leave you in peace too.
Download RegCure and fix DLL errors.