Some details below:
The CWxxAuto.dll is a dll (a COM server really) that hosts all the automation functions for SONAR.
It handles all the parameter and envelope automation capabilities. Each version has its own automation dll. Deleting it permanently will certainly hose your SONAR installation and prevent the application from launching. If you temporarily deleted it and then reinstalled that would be OK since the installer would put it back.
COM dll's need to be registered (using regsvr32) to put COM object identification information into the registry (just like DX plugins do) A somewhat rare problem that happens when people install is that the automatic registration from the installer fails for some reason. One reason can be if Windows denies access to the registry (antivirus or malware blockers often prevent registry access). Another typical reason for a failure to register the dll is that some dependency is missing on your system.
All dependent files are installed by our installer via the Microsoft C++ redistributable. We only require the appropriate C runtime dlls. There is no dependency on .NET at all since SONAR does not use any managed code - its all native. (Some plugins might use .NET but that wouldn't cause SONAR to fail to load). The redistributable installer can fail for the same reasons cited above. If this is unsuccessful, you will now have an automation dll which will fail to register itself. This will cause the app to fail to launch as well. BTW you should never manually uninstall the redist from add/remove programs since that will cause the same problem. Installing an earlier version of the redistributable via some other application (in your case VS2005 express) shouldn' t normally cause an issue since multiple versions of the redist can co-exist on the machine and the files have different names and dependencies. If installing something broke this that would imply a buggy redistributable installer.
The simplest solution in such cases is to first try and manually register the object from a command prompt by running the command on the appropriate dll:
regsvr32 CWxxAuto.dll
If that succeeds you should be good to go. If not, first reboot your system clean, then delete the CWxxAuto.dll file and rerun the installer (choose minimal install of just the program) to reinstall the file and redo the registration. In most cases this is all thats required to fix the problem.
PS: A useful (somewhat technical) diagnostic tool for resolving issues like this in general is Dependency Walker. It shows all the static dependencies of a given exe or dll on the system allowing you to troubleshoot what exactly is missing.
http://www.dependencywalker.com/
post edited by Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk] - 2010/07/06 07:57:58