GDAL Application crashes when loading GDAL drivers?

Question

I'm developing on QT an application that uses GDAL library (which I compiled using MinGW 4.8). When I use the application on my windows 8 laptop, it works fine, but when I tried using it on several windows 7 computers it crashes as soon as I use the GDAL dll.

Mapper::Mapper() {
GDALAllRegister();
...
}

My program didn't send any error, but when I looked in the eventlog I saw this:

Faulting application name: MainApp.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x00000000
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 6.1.7601.18247, time stamp: 0x521ea8e7
Exception code: 0xc0000374
Fault offset: 0x000ce753
Faulting process id: 0x12fc
Faulting application start time: 0x01cfc5ade29fe9d9
Faulting application path: C:\Users...\release\MainApp.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll
Report Id: 3e036714-31a1-11e4-8ac1-bc7737c9ef36

Fault bucket , type 0
Event Name: APPCRASH
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: MainApp.exe
P2: 0.0.0.0
P3: 00000000
P4: StackHash_940e
P5: 6.1.7601.18247
P6: 521ea8e7
P7: c0000374
P8: 000ce753
P9:

Any ideas what may be causing this?

Answer 1

I experienced a similar problem. I use Windows 7. I compiled the binaries for MinGW using the steps found on this page http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/BuildingWithMinGW (I could not find prebuilt binaries for MinGW, the links in the documentation were a dead end). The produced DLL and LIB files were linked correctly but my program still crashed. I also had installed the GDAL command line app previously. It turned out the DLL and EXE file for the command line app were 64 bit and they somehow interfered with the 32 bit DLL/compiler. Once I deleted the command line app everything worked correctly.

Make sure your build kit in Qt is using the same compiler you used compile the GDAL binaries.

Also, here is the code I used to link to the GDAL DLL.

unix|win32: LIBS += -L$$PWD/../../../../../MinGW/msys/1.0/local/lib/ -llibgdal #path to GDAL DLL

INCLUDEPATH += $$PWD/../../../../../MinGW/msys/1.0/local/include #path to header includes
DEPENDPATH += $$PWD/../../../../../MinGW/msys/1.0/local/include #path to header includes

Answer 2

Make sure you set the environment variables. Check that the GDAL DLLs of the right bitness on your path.

SysWOW64 indicates to me that you're trying to run 32-bit on a 64-bit OS.