Thursday 14 October 2010

Windows Phone 7 development: XnaMediaHelper_1.dll error

Hi folks,

When building an XNA Game Studio solution for Windows Phone 7 that includes any sort or media like audio or video files, you might have encountered the same problem I ran into:

error : Building content threw DllNotFoundException: Unable to load DLL 'XnaMediaHelper_1.dll': The specified module could not be found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E)

Well XnaMediaHelper_1.dll is the default library to compile XNA media content. The problem is, that XnaMediaHelper_1.dll is referenced by the media importers which are added by default to the content folder. Hence, XnaMediaHelper_1.dll can not be referenced directly by your XNA project.

To solve this error you need to install the “Desktop Experience” feature which includes the required codecs from your Windows 7 installation disk. If you are running a Windows 7 N or Windows 7 KN version download and install the Media Feature Pack for Windows 7 N and Windows 7 KN (KB968211) to solve this problem.

Have fun!

2 comments:

chillwalker said...

thanks a lot, i had the same problem an no idea why. your post and the link saved me some time searching on google :)

Joey Figaro said...

What about people who aren't running n or kn? Having the same issue and there doesn't seem to be any information regarding Windows 7 Ultimate.