Error: The application has failed to start because the side by side configuration is incorrect please see the application event log or use the command line sxstrace.exe tool for more detail

I'm getting this, too when I attempt to load a CD from my doctor with X-Ray and MRI Imagery. I've done this before with no trouble - until now. How do I fix this? Thanks.

I am getting the error " "WINDOWS 7 error The application has failed to start because the side by side configuration is incorrect please see the application event log or use the command line sxstrace.exe tool for more detail." for every application that i try to launch.

Please help with a fix.

This came up not with windows 7 but when I tried to run OnLineTV and I got this message

Hi n0fan,

·         May I know when do you get this error message?

·         Was it working fine earlier?

For details about it check the application event log using event viewer. Please see the link below for information about how to use event viewer to check for error message or information,

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/What-information-appears-in-event-logs-Event-Viewer

Please check the information in event viewer and let us know about the issue more briefly to provide you a better solution.

Regards

Yaaser - Microsoft Support Engineer

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Some more info I wanted to share... I went back through the logs and traced it as far back, looking to try to pinpoint when I started getting errors.  I noticed that at one point, the PC had reported 'unexpected shutdown' several times over.  I also noticed an error about a dll-file (I'm sorry, I'm writing this from memory... it was something like dllXXX. exe I believe).  There were some critical errors listed, and ultimately I found an early error which suggests a hardware failure.

But now I've run some diagnostics on the hard drive and everything comes back fine! could it be the hard drive had some failure, messed up the file structure, is ok now, but that's why I'm getting side-by-side errors?

All I know to do at this point is start over and re-install Win 7.  Its rather disappointing. I couldn't do a restore because the system in its current state doesn't show any restore points! (I am really good at keeping restore points... this probably burned me more than anything else! Where did my restore points go???!).  But I'm afraid for the hard drive, which is brand new and only about 5 months old.  Only one way to find out I guess.