I've just started using SDL, and have been following lazyfoo's tutorial here, and all has been going well so far, until I got to using TTF fonts. Whenever I add the library and link it, which I have already done with the SDL_Image library successfully, I cannot run the program with the error 0xc000007b, which seems to be a common .dll error. The same program will run fine without any mention of the TTF library so I'm certain it has to do with that. I have tried reinstalling the library from fresh sources, but get the same result each time, so I'm unsure what I'm doing wrong, any help will be appreciated.

At Linux, I link with two libraries, libSDL, and libSDL_ttf, perhaps it is the same situation with Windows?

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Sorry, I should've mentioned, I'm using Windows and visual studio express 2008, so the libraries should be linked and everything through that, which it does seem to be, since it compiles fine, only when running do I get the error.

Ah, ok.
I have no idea what 0xc000007b means, but it looks like a crash error.

Did you try some simple experiments, like linking but not using, only initializing (return values are ok?), using sdl but not sdl_ttf, and vice versa and so on?
Does adding a debug print statement work, or can you run it in the debugger?

Perhaps you can find out where in the execution it fails.

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Did you build SDL_ttf yourself or just download the binary? Visual Studio is very picky about libs, make sure that both libSDL and libSDL_ttf are compiled for your version of Visual studio and were using the same linking options (multithreaded-dll should work). Also make sure that you are using all 64bit or all 32bit dlls and are compiling your program as such. If you are sure of those things then try to narrow your program down (or make a new one) with the simplest code that makes it crash.

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I have tried stuff like that, I found the most I can do is link it, use sdl_tff, #include "sdl_ttf.h", but the error only occurs when I include TTF_Init().



I downloaded the binary, how would I check if they are compiled for my version of visual studio?
I'm sure I copied across the 32bit dll's, however I'm not too sure they actually are 32bit. I used dependency walker on the .exe thats compiled, and get these errors:

And in the list, there are 2 64bit dll's while all the rest are 32bit. However, these are dll's that I don't think I'm referencing, they're MSVCR90.DLL and ZLIB1.DLL. It also complains that GPSVC.DLL and IESHIMS.DLL are missing. I haven't seen these before, and they weren't in the download for the SDL_ttf.

MSVCR90.dll is from visual studio 2008, so I'm guessing you have the right one there. IESHIMS.DLL is from internet explorer, dependency walker always complains about that and it can safely be ignored. Not sure what GPSVC.dll is, most likely a system dll. ZLIB1.DLL might be your issue, do you have a zlib.dll in your working directory along side sdl.dll and sdl_ttf.dll?

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Success!
Thanks!
Including zlib1.dll in the working directory fixed it completely. That just makes me wonder though, why would it not just say that?