But, as per the search order, other directories will be searched before searching the current directory. In this case, we assume that the original DLL file is available in the current directory. A search for this DLL file will be triggered to find this DLL.Īs mentioned earlier, Windows attempts to locate the DLL by searching a predefined set of folders in a specific order shown in the previous section. Let us assume that an application is designed to load a DLL from the current directory, as shown in the following excerpt.Īs we can observe, a fully qualified name is not specified when loading the DLL file. The directories that are listed in the PATH environment variable.The directory from which the application loaded.When a fully qualified path name is not specified, Windows attempts to locate the DLL by searching a predefined set of folders in a specific order. It should be noted that it is applicable only when the fully qualified path name of the DLL is not specified. DLL load order is how Dynamic Link Library (DLL) files are searched for in Windows operating systems when they are required to be loaded.

What is a dll file?