Windows Dependencies

FEX.Core.dll ships alongside a small number of dependency DLLs. Three are mandatory for the library to load; the rest are feature-gated and only need to be present if you use the corresponding feature.

All of them are included in bin/Win64/ in the SDK package — drop in only the ones you need.

Mandatory

These three DLLs must be present alongside FEX.Core.dll. Without them, FEX.Core.dll fails to load at process start.

DLL	Purpose
`FEX.Core.dll`	Main forensic processing library
`libcrypto-1_1-x64.dll`	OpenSSL 1.1 — image hashing and crypto primitives used throughout the DLL
`bzip2.dll`	bzip2 decompression for compressed E01 / Ex01 images

Optional (feature-gated)

These DLLs are only required if you use the corresponding feature. If a DLL is absent, FEX.Core.dll still loads, but calls that exercise the feature will fail.

DLL	Feature it enables
`sqlite3_64.dll`	SQLite database parsing (browser history, app databases)
`libyara64.dll`	YARA pattern matching for file-type identification
`libpcre2-16.dll`	PCRE2 regular-expression search
`raptor2.dll`	RDF / Turtle parser used by AFF4 metadata
`zlib1.dll`	Zlib (gzip / deflate) decompression
`snappy.dll`	Snappy decompression

Deployment

Option A: Same Directory (Recommended)

Place the DLLs you need in the same directory as your application executable. This is the simplest and most reliable approach.

my-app/
├── my_app.exe              # Your application
├── FEX.Core.dll            # mandatory
├── libcrypto-1_1-x64.dll   # mandatory
├── bzip2.dll               # mandatory
└── ...                     # optional DLLs for features you use

Option B: Python Projects

When using the Python SDK, the loader automatically searches for the DLL in standard locations relative to the SDK directory:

The python/ directory itself
Win64/Release/ relative to the SDK root
Win64/Debug/ relative to the SDK root
bin/Win64/ relative to the SDK root

You can also specify the DLL path explicitly:

from core.loader import load_library
lib, path = load_library(lib_path=r"C:\path\to\FEX.Core.dll")

Option C: System PATH

Add the DLL directory to your system PATH environment variable. Less portable but useful for development.

Platform Requirements

Architecture: x64 only (64-bit Python required)
OS: Windows 10/11, Windows Server 2016+
Runtime: Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime is typically pre-installed on modern Windows. If you encounter missing VCRUNTIME140.dll errors, install the Visual C++ Redistributable.

Notes

OpenSSL version: FEX Core links against OpenSSL 1.1.x. The included libcrypto-1_1-x64.dll is self-contained and does not conflict with OpenSSL 3.x if installed system-wide.
No GUI dependencies: FEX.Core.dll is a headless library with no GUI framework dependencies on Windows.
Thread safety: All V2 API functions are thread-safe. Multiple threads can operate on different images concurrently.