unresolved external symbol/using an external dll

From: Scott Allen (scottelloco_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 04/30/04 

Date: 30 Apr 2004 12:06:57 -0700

Hello,

I'm new to C++ development and I'm trying out figure out the cause of
an 'unresolved external symbol' error that I'm receiving when
compiling. Here is some history on what I'm doing:

I have an existing VC++ project that mostly just reads a SQL Server
database does some work on the data and insert the results into
another table. I have the need to incorproate some functionality from
a certain dll named cedb300.dll. cedb300.dll is an unsupported
Microsoft dll that allows the reading and writing of Windows CE
databases to a disk (as opposed to an actual device). I have a list of
function signatures that are externally available from this dll.

I only have access to the dll, so I used a program called 'DLL to Lib'
(http://www.binary-soft.com/dll2lib/dll2lib.htm) to generate a .lib
file from the dll. This appeared to be successful. I copied both the
cedb300.dll and cedb300.lib files into my VC++ project directory and
added cedb300.lib to 'Projects->Settings->Link->Object/library
modules'

I add a call in my VC++ project to one of the functions in
cedb300.dll, but when I try to compile I get a 'unresolved external
symbol' error message. Naturally, removing the call to the function
causes the error to go away and my app compiles.

So, being new to VC++, I'm not sure if there's some more code I need
to add to my source to allow me to call functions from an external
dll, or if VC++ is simply not able to access the .lib files or if the
lib file is corrupted, or all of the above.

Is there something else I need to add to my code/project to allow me
to call functions from an external dll? Or is there another tool
someone can recommend to create a lib from a dll?

Thanks very much,
-Scott

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