From time to time we get questions about an error message which seems to be generated by pmSounds, but in reality has to do with either the sound card you are using, MSN Live or possibly even some kind of malware. 

The error message is approximately as follows:

Executable C:\pmsounds\pmsounds.exe had the following unrecoverable error:

Couldn’t find library MSVCR90.dll (required by c:\windows\system32\sirenacm.dll.)

I did some research and the results were very confusing. But here are some facts:

  • MSVCR90.dll is one of the runtime DLLs part of  Microsoft Visual C++ 2008, so you would need to download that.
  • pmSounds does not call MSVCR90.dll directly, and it doesn’t access sirenacm.dll. It is on none of the computers I am testing with.
  • sirenacm.dll seems to be part of Microsoft Live and it’s Properties say Messenger Audio Codec
  • There have been reports of Malware that take over the sirenacm.dll file

So my recommendation is, if this is a flight simulator computer you are running pmSounds on, find and rename sirenacm.dll to something else, like sirenacm.nodll and run pmSounds. It should work. Then check your Messenger installation, if you need it, and see whether it works.

You can also go on to www.bing.com and look for the  Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 runtime files and install those.

Should anyone here know more about this, please contact us?