I was cruising along just fine on a project I've been working on for YEARS until about a half hour ago when this error suddenly popped up in VS during publishing:

Error 1 Unable to load DLL 'webengine.dll': The specified module could not be found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E) /

Now it doesn't seem to matter what project I open, I get this message.

There are lots of cryptic sites on the subject, but nothing that appears to apply.

Does anybody have anything to suggest other than reinstalling VS or the virtually useless mantra spewed by all computer help desks: "reset the PC to original manufacturer settings"?

Please see if this link helps:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947461

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Om Prakash Pant
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Thank you for your response.

The problem was caused by a failure to start the WWW Publishing Service. For some reason, the service shut down unexpectedly in the middle of a compile without even an error message sent to the Event logger to explain the cause. Furthermore, the service changed from AUTO start to MANUAL, which meant rebooting did not correct the problem, of course, because the service stayed down. Once I realized this I reset it to AUTO-START and rebooted and the problem resolved.

I must say it is very disconcerting that there is no explanation for why the service crashed or why it was changed to MANUAL start. I certainly did not change those settings myself, nor does the program in question attempt to do so (assuming that is even possible?) It would certainly help if the error message VS generated actually suggested checking to see whether the WWW Publishing Service was running.

Thanks again for your response!