ImportError: DLL load failed while importing _tf: A dynamic link library (DLL) initialization routine failed

Community Build and Deployment
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1

I was building usd on my local machine (Windows 11), I use VSCode. after building, I execute Usdviewq.Launcher().Run() ( basically poping up USDView )
I run this from within VSCode and it all works, run this from command line through python directly, works fine.

I then switched to building the binaries on gitlab using this image mcr.microsoft.com/windows/servercore:ltsc2022-amd64
build works fine.
when I copy the artifacts to my local machine
and run the same code through VSCode, all works fine, when I run it from the command line, directly through python, it fails … this is my callstack:


Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\test\test_usd.py", line 24, in <module>
    import pxr.Usdviewq as Usdviewq
  File "d:\venv-3.9\lib\site-packages\pxr\Usdviewq\__init__.py", line 10, in <module>
    from pxr import Tf
  File "d:\venv-3.9\lib\site-packages\pxr\Tf\__init__.py", line 161, in <module>
    PreparePythonModule()
  File "d:\venv-3.9\lib\site-packages\pxr\Tf\__init__.py", line 86, in PreparePythonModule
    module = importlib.import_module(
  File "d:\python\3.9\lib\importlib\__init__.py", line 127, in import_module
    return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
ImportError: DLL load failed while importing _tf: A dynamic link library (DLL) initialization routine failed.

Any hint would be greatly appreciated

2

When it works, can you try printing out PATH and PYTHONPATH

eg

import os
print(os.environ['PATH'])
print(os.environ.get('PYTHONPATH'))

and then do it again with the artifact? My guess is that you’ll have to point PATH and PYTHONPATH into the artifact in a similar way to make it work.

3

I did get it to work. My PATH variable was huge, and also had a couple weird old folders in there. I cleaned it up and it just works.
I am still confused about what made the process run successfully from VSCode but not from command line but I cannot repro anymore (I tried to programmatically bloat my PATH variable but it didn’t do anything). Anyhow, thanks for answering!

4

Ok, I eventually got to the bottom of this one (it started happening on one of my user’s machine). What it came down to is an additional (bogus?) version of msvcp140.dll coming from some unrelated java folder that they had on their path.
So the actual fix is to deploy the proper msvcp140.dll and the vcredist in the same folder as the usd dlls, so it doesn’t get confused by potential other versions on your machine …