If you are installing software on Windows Server 2012 you may find that you receive an error stating that a .DLL is missing.
Windows Server 2012 does not commonly come prepackaged with the DLLs commonly installed on standard Windows operating systems which are required by applications to run successfully.
Step 1: Install Desktop Experience
The majority of issues related to missing DLLs can be solved by installing ‘Desktop Experience’.
How to install Desktop Experience.
Although it may not be required – After installing Desktop Experience, you can also install Windows Media Player using the following command:
dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:MediaPlayback
Step 2: Miscellaneous missing DLLs
Only continue to this step if the first step does not resolve the issue.
We have seen reports that the following required .DLLs are missing on Windows Server 2012.
If you receive an error that a .DLL is missing, the solution is to install that specific Windows .DLL.
All Windows DLLs can be downloaded from the official Windows website. In some cases you may be able to simply enable a DLL from within the Windows Server 2012 Control Panel.