[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.]
Recommendation (Designed for Microsoft® Windows® Logo)
Your application should avoid installing globally shared DLLs. Instead, an application should install all the DLLs it uses in the same directory as its executable (.exe) files.
Versioning problems relating to globally shared DLLs have plagued users. The price for avoiding such problems with your installation is modestly increased disk space usage for your application. DLL versioning problems can be avoided by not relying on globally shared DLLs unless they are part of the operating system. Given the low cost of hard disk space, this is a small price to pay to avoid potentially disrupting your users' environments.