Installation problem - missing libcef.dll

[IainThompson]

Evening All. I needed to do a clean re-install of Windows 10, and hence I had to re-install Cakewalk by Bandlab ( as in the free one). I got a few error messages on the re-install of which the most persistent one is that I get an error message on starting Cakewalk saying that "the code execution cannot proceed because libcef.dll cannot be found". I've raised the issue with Bandlab, but as yet have not had a reply. Any ideas from the great and the good of the Cakewalk community?  I've been a long term user of Cakewalk ( and had the original lifetime subscription for Sonar), so have used the software on this machine without any issues previously.

[mettelus]

That file has a common name to numerous programs (each is different, but its purpose is the same) and it is embedded into the app directory which needs it. The one you reference is probably for the Cakewalk Start Screen, and defaults to being in the C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities\StartPage directory. It is possible you have a corrupted installer for CbB. Did you use an installer you had previously downloaded or download the last version released? The re-installation recommendation (or even repair if available) would be your best route to correct that.

As an aside, the Shared Utilities are as the name implies, so installing older versions of software over newer versions can replace files that the newer version needs to run. This is why during re-installs that it is recommended to start with the oldest Cakewalk version first and install them in order of oldest to newest.

[IainThompson]

Many thanks for this helpful reply. Although I used the latest version of the installer from the Bandlab site, the libcef.dll file was missing from the folder that you referred to. (The installer did give an error referring to this file). I copied the file over from another PC that has Cakewalk on it and now everything starts up OK. Once again, thanks for your help.