Hello all! Problem We do CI builds of a .NET app in a Windows Server Core Docker container. The app has some code that manipulates images and this code depends on "C:\Windows\System32\WindowsCodecsExt.dll" and "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\WindowsCodecsExt.dll". For the unit tests of this code to run the files need to be there. In Server Core however these 2 files do not exist. Current solution When we build our Server Core Docker image we also download the exact same version of the full Windows image, take the files from there and put them in the Server Core image. This works perfect but is not ideal because we have to download multiple GBs for only 2 DLL files. I don't like using the full image for the builds because that's a looot of bloat to carry along for 2 files. Better solution Can we get just these 2 files with the correct version from an online source? "sfc /scannow" and also "dism.exe /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth" seem to be able to restore individual corrupt files and is backed by some online source (Windows Update)? I'm under the impression that for this to work these tools must have a way to download any system file for a specific Windows version and patch level. Is there any way to manually get these files? TL;DR Is there a way to manually download any system file directly from Microsoft's servers for a given Windows version and optionally patch level? EDIT: fixed typo in file name.
Google does not know what "WindowsCodexExt.dll" is and I don't have it on my systems. Did you mean WindowsCodecsExt.dll?
Yes that was a typo. WindowsCodecsExt.dll it is. But that's not really relevant, just the particular file I'm after but it can be any file.