HOW-TO: dwwin.exe - DLL Initialization Failed

Have you ever noticed this error message pop-up each time you shutdown or reboot your computer? Although shutdown proceeds and the message seems harmless (and in fact it does not give a clue of anything wrong), it is still a nuisance to get such especially on shutdown sequence.

This article will discuss the weird solution to such error message.. I say "weird" because the error message does not give a clue and the solution to it seems unrelated at all. You will get to know it soon. Read on..

I could not capture a screenshot of the pop-up message but since you are here, you might have searched for this cos you might have encountered it and got curious. Don't worry, when I first encountered it we probably shared the same puzzled expression and curiousity.

However, I can share the event message with you. If you take a look at the application event logs of your machine you should be able to see something similar (see screenshot below) -- Event ID: 26. Completely clueless, I went to search in the internet for a possible solution.. And unfortunately, did not find any.

However, a friend has already encountered the same and with his permission I am posting the solution here.

Believe it or not, the error has something to do with Adobe Acrobat Reader. So launch the reader and go to:

"Edit"
--> "Preferences"
----> "Internet"
(untick "Display PDF in browser")

Execution will cause Acrobat Reader to repair itself and the pop-up message will no longer haunt you when executing a reboot or shutdown.