I had been using "IBM Rational ClearQuest Client 7.1.2 for Windows" 32-bit application with Windows 8 Pro x64 without problems.
But after 8.1 upgrade the ClearQuest fails to start and gives error 0xC000007B, which indicates that there's a bad or missing DLL.
I used the Windows 8.1 ISO file from MSDN to do the upgrade and I've also installed the GA updates, but the problem remains the same.
The DependencyWalker reports that the clearquest.exe is missing six Windows 8.1 system DLLs:
API-MS-WIN-CORE-KERNEL32-PRIVATE-L1-1-1.DLL
API-MS-WIN-CORE-PRIVATEPROFILE-L1-1-1.DLL
API-MS-WIN-SERVICE-PRIVATE-L1-1-1.DLL
API-MS-WIN-CORE-SHUTDOWN-L1-1-1.DLL
EXT-MS-WIN-NTUSER-UICONTEXT-EXT-L1-1-0.DLL
IESHIMS.DLL
First three of those files are located in SysWOW64\downlevel, but the 32-bit clearquest.exe is not able to find those DLLs. IESHIMS.DLL is located under WinSxS directory tree, but not available for 32-bit clearquest.exe
But API-MS-WIN-CORE-SHUTDOWN-L1-1-1.DLL and EXT-MS-WIN-NTUSER-UICONTEXT-EXT-L1-1-0.DLL can not be found at all from Windows 8.1 system!
This is very strange because SETUPAPI.DLL (in System32 and SysWOW64) depends on API-MS-WIN-CORE-SHUTDOWN-L1-1-1.DLL (checked with "dumpbin /imports" command)!
And D3D11.DLL depends on the missing EXT-MS-WIN-NTUSER-UICONTEXT-EXT-L1-1-0.DLL.
I've tried to install ClearQuest again but it didn't help. I've also used "sfc /verifyonly" command, but it reports that everyhing is OK.
I've checked two other Windows 8.1 systems that have also been upgraded from Windows 8 and those files are missing also in those systems.
Is it really so that there are system files missing from Windows 8.1 upgrades?
Jari