I received a piece of software to test from one of my developers.

When I ran it I got all types of SxS and missing manifest errors so I went into debugging mode. I checked the dependencies and I was missing some vs2007 debug dlls so the developer sent them over and of course it didn't run then either. I checked my debug logs and it was screaming SxS probs. A month ago I disabled the dllcache and sfc features to get manual control over many of my libraries and it maybe I had sent myself back into w95 dll hell. I flagged the app to be profiled using the App Verifier and then forgot about it. My developer recompiled it without the debug libraries and sent it over again. Now I was getting a different error (80000003) and there were no dependencies on any debug libs and I started up extra service which it could depend on then changed the versions of some base dlls in my SxS repository and still nothing. I decided to fire up filemon (shout out to Microsoft: yo) and watched as the app fire up again. It logged a tonne of accesses to the verifier log for the app which reminded me I had the app being watched in the verifier so I removed it and voila!

To make a long story short the Application Verifier isn't compatible with my new application... so don't use it. on it.