Task.Start .NET CORE Unable to load DLL combase.dll error Windows 7

Question

We have some code that utilizes basic C# Task objects. However, when developing on a Windows 7 machine, attempting to run Task.Start(); results in:

Exception thrown: 'System.DllNotFoundException' in System.Private.CoreLib.ni.dll

Additional Information: Unable to load DLL 'combase.dll': the specified module could not be found (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E)

When running this code on a windows 10 dev machine everything works fine.

In doing research for a version of combase.dll for windows 7 I have so far come up blank.

Has anyone else had this error before and if so, how did you work around it?

Answer 1

As you can see from compatibility chart posted here the minimum supported windows version is 8.0 and 10 for the newer versions of the netstandard framework and therefore of dotnet core.

Windows 7 is simply not supported and therefore dotnet core won't run. I am not saying there are no work-arounds but I wouldn't recommend hosting dotnet core code on windows 7 for production purposes.

Windows 7 is legacy already since the mainstream support ended 2 years ago (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet) so don't expect dotnet core to become compatible to it at any point. If you have to support windows 7 I'm afraid you will have to rely on the classic dotnet framework.