[Performance] ONNX runtime is not able to load on machines running lower VC runtime libraries

[savellan]

Describe the issue

I have spent several hours trying to figure why the ONNX runtime does not load the dlls while creating Inference session.
It turned out that the msvcp and vc runtime dlls I have been packaging are slightly older (14.22) while what ONNX runs successfully is 14.40.
What is the minimal vc runtime library that ONNX requires?

Also, it would be helpful to know that these are incompatible since the errors I have seen were not clear enough to understand what is causing the dll to not load.

To reproduce

Run ONNX Inference session creation with lower versions of msvcp and vc runtime. It would say ONNX dll load is failing.
It would throw below exception:msvcp140!mtx_do_lock+0x74 [d:\agent_work\2\s\src\vctools\crt\crtw32\stdcpp\thr\mutex.c @ 102]
onnxruntime+0x5cd1
onnxruntime+0x105c1
onnxruntime+0x10636
ucrtbase!_initterm+0x2d [minkernel\crts\ucrt\src\appcrt\startup\initterm.cpp @ 16]
onnxruntime+0x95761a
onnxruntime+0x957787
ntdll!LdrpCallInitRoutine+0x6b [minkernel\ntdll\ldr.c @ 225]
ntdll!LdrpInitializeNode+0x1ca [minkernel\ntdll\ldrsnap.c @ 1445]
ntdll!LdrpInitializeGraphRecurse+0x42 [minkernel\ntdll\ldrddag.c @ 1758]
ntdll!LdrpInitializeGraph+0x19 [minkernel\ntdll\ldrddag.c @ 1777]
ntdll!LdrpPrepareModuleForExecution+0xbf [minkernel\ntdll\ldrsnap.c @ 2626]
ntdll!LdrpLoadDllInternal+0x2f1 [minkernel\ntdll\ldrapi.c @ 1149]
ntdll!LdrpLoadDll+0xb0 [minkernel\ntdll\ldrapi.c @ 1403]
ntdll!LdrLoadDll+0x106 [minkernel\ntdll\ldrapi.c @ 626]
KERNELBASE!LoadLibraryExW+0x172 [minkernel\kernelbase\module.c @ 1235]
clr!CLRLoadLibraryExWorker+0x54 [f:\dd\ndp\clr\src\vm\util.cpp @ 2771]
clr!CLRLoadLibraryEx+0x51 [f:\dd\ndp\clr\src\vm\util.cpp @ 2791]
clr!LocalLoadLibraryHelper+0x31 [f:\dd\ndp\clr\src\vm\dllimport.cpp @ 6613]
clr!NDirect::LoadLibraryModule+0x404 [f:\dd\ndp\clr\src\vm\dllimport.cpp @ 7000]
clr!NDirect::NDirectLink+0x80 [f:\dd\ndp\clr\src\vm\dllimport.cpp @ 7176]
clr!NDirect::GetStubForILStub+0x4b [f:\dd\ndp\clr\src\vm\dllimport.cpp @ 5888]
clr!GetStubForInteropMethod+0x65 [f:\dd\ndp\clr\src\vm\dllimport.cpp @ 6019]
clr!MethodDesc::DoPrestub+0xc0d [f:\dd\ndp\clr\src\vm\prestub.cpp @ 1522]
clr!PreStubWorker+0x3cc [f:\dd\ndp\clr\src\vm\prestub.cpp @ 1020]
clr!ThePreStub+0x55 [f:\dd\ndp\clr\src\vm\amd64\ThePreStubAMD64.asm @ 18]
Microsoft_ML_OnnxRuntime!Microsoft.ML.OnnxRuntime.NativeMethods..cctor+0x2e
clr!CallDescrWorkerInternal+0x83 [f:\dd\ndp\clr\src\vm\amd64\CallDescrWorkerAMD64.asm @ 97]
clr!CallDescrWorkerWithHandler+0x4e [f:\dd\ndp\clr\src\vm\callhelpers.cpp @ 89]
clr!DispatchCallDebuggerWrapper+0x1f [f:\dd\ndp\clr\src\vm\callhelpers.cpp @ 183]
clr!DispatchCallSimple+0x93 [f:\dd\ndp\clr\src\vm\callhelpers.cpp @ 238]
clr!MethodTable::RunClassInitEx+0x111 [f:\dd\ndp\clr\src\vm\methodtable.cpp @ 3269]
clr!MethodTable::DoRunClassInitThrowing+0x353 [f:\dd\ndp\clr\src\vm\methodtable.cpp @ 3501]
clr!MethodTable::CheckRunClassInitThrowing+0xb0 [f:\dd\ndp\clr\src\vm\methodtable.cpp @ 3659]
clr!JIT_GetSharedNonGCStaticBase_Helper+0xcd [f:\dd\ndp\clr\src\vm\jithelpers.cpp @ 1551]
Microsoft_ML_OnnxRuntime!Microsoft.ML.OnnxRuntime.SessionOptions..ctor+0x89

Urgency

No response

Platform

Windows

OS Version

N/A

ONNX Runtime Installation

Built from Source

ONNX Runtime Version or Commit ID

1.22.1

ONNX Runtime API

C#

Architecture

X64

Execution Provider

TensorRT

Execution Provider Library Version

9.0.0

Model File

No response

Is this a quantized model?

Yes

[tianleiwu]

You can use the following to determine the minimum version of VC runtime dll in VS developer console:

dumpbin /headers onnxruntime.dll | findstr "linker"

Example output "14.40 linker version" means 14.40 is used.

[snnn]

This issue appears to be related to #26570, which was recently resolved.

Root Cause

Both issues stem from Visual C++ Runtime library version mismatches. In issue #26570, the user experienced DLL initialization failures with access violations during protobuf mutex initialization, which was ultimately resolved by reinstalling the Visual C++ Redistributable packages.

Connection Between the Issues

Your issue (#26599) specifically identifies that:

• You're packaging older VC runtime libraries (14.22)
• ONNX Runtime requires newer runtime libraries (14.40)

This is exactly the type of mismatch that caused the crashes in #26570. The error you're seeing ("ONNX dll load is failing") is the symptom, while the underlying cause is that the older msvcp/vcruntime DLLs don't provide the necessary functionality that the ONNX Runtime DLL expects.

Solution

As suggested by @tianleiwu in the comment above, you can determine the exact minimum VC runtime version required by running:

dumpbin /headers onnxruntime.dll | findstr "linker"

This will show you the linker version (e.g., "14.40 linker version"), which indicates the minimum VC runtime library version you need to package with your application.

You should ensure your application packages and uses the matching or newer Visual C++ Redistributable libraries (14.40 in this case) to avoid initialization failures.

Reference

See also: #21102 (comment) for more details on VC runtime dependencies.

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Note: This comment was generated with AI assistance.

[savellan]

Thanks for the responses.

In issue #26599 I identified that ONNX Runtime was failing to load because I was packaging older VC++ runtime libraries (version 14.22), while the ONNX Runtime build I was using required version 14.40 back in September. Thanks to @dhpalle for the suggestions.

Using dumpbin /headers onnxruntime.dll | findstr "linker" helped confirm the required version, and updating the runtime fixed the issue.

For future reference, is there a plan to expose the VC runtime requirement on the nuget package itself?