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Amrutha P
- PowerBuilder
- Thursday, 12 February 2026 12:20 PM UTC
Hi All,
We are currently migrating an application from Sybase PowerBuilder (12.5.2) to Appeon PowerBuilder 2022 R3 (Classic).
The project builds successfully, and the runtime has been set up using the Appeon Runtime Packager. However, when attempting to run the generated EXE on the target machine, the application does not open.
Initial Issue
Originally, we were receiving a “PBVM.dll not found” error.
We followed the recommended deployment process using the PB Runtime Packager MSI.
After installing the runtime:
- The popup error disappeared.
- However, the application still does not launch.
Event Viewer Observation
Windows Event Viewer shows:
- Faulting module: PBVM.dll
At this stage, there is no visible UI error — the application simply terminates.
Further Debugging
We ran:
appname.exe /pbdebug
This generated a .dbg file.
The debug log indicates that:
- PBD and required DLL files are being loaded.
- Toward the end of execution, a DivideByZeroError is triggered.
Relevant portion from the debug file:
Executing object function +CREATE for class DIVIDEBYZEROERROR
Executing object function RUNTIMEERRORCREATE for class DIVIDEBYZEROERROR
...
End class function +DESTROY for class DIVIDEBYZEROERROR
We then configured the machine to generate crash dumps. The dump analysis indicates what appears to be a null pointer-related issue inside PBVM:
pbvm!rt_error_using_struct
pbvm!rt_hit_level_0
pbvm!ob_instance_simple_refpkt
pbvm!ob_copy_group_shrsym_data
pbvm!ob_get_groups_shlist
pbvm!ob_convert_chararray_to_string
pbvm!rt_stop_run
pbvm!FN_RunExecutableEx
What We Have Already Verified
- Runtime installed via PB Packager MSI
- Correct bitness configured
- Required runtime DLLs present
- DB client runtime installed
- Tested both with and without XML runtime configuration
- Tested by placing all runtime DLLs in the same folder as the EXE
- Verified no missing PBVM.dll after MSI installation
Current Understanding:
At this point, it appears:
- The EXE starts execution.
- Runtime loads successfully.
- A divide-by-zero exception occurs early during initialization.
- Crash dump suggests a null reference or struct-related issue inside PBVM.
Questions:
- Has anyone encountered a divide-by-zero error during application startup after migration to PB 2022 R3?
- Is there a known issue in PB 2022 R3 related to startup crashes tied to shared object groups or struct references?
- Is there any specific datatype or structure definition (for example, certain struct usage, shared objects, char arrays, or migrated external function declarations) that is known to trigger a divide-by-zero or null reference error at runtime in PB 2022 R3 during application startup?
- we are wondering whether this could be related to a datatype conversion, struct definition mismatch, or migrated object reference that behaves differently in Appeon compared to Sybase PB 12.5.2.
Any direction on where to focus next would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Amrutha
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