DAZzle and WINE
Brief History by Woozle
I originally installed Endicia's DAZzle program on Windows 98 sometime in 2005 or 2006. Even long after Microsoft dropped support for Windows 98, DAZzle continued to work just fine with it until sometime in 2008, at which point a mandatory upgrade arrived which would not run under 98. (The user did not have to accept the upgrade, but it was made clear that the current version would no longer work with the service after a certain date.)
There was no attempt to warn the user that the upgrade would not work with their operating system, or to check for compatibility before making the program unusable. Uninstalling the upgrade did not fix the problem, either.
At that point, I found that it would run under WINE (albeit with a couple of annoying habits such as not being able to remember the passphrase). A few days later, though, there was another upgrade which I foolishly accepted -- and it would not run after that.
On 2009-04-10 I tried to run it once again, thinking that perhaps the latest version of WINE (which was pre-1.0 on the previous attempt but is now version 1.1.18) might have fixed the problem. No such luck; I don't even get an error dialog. If I run it from a command console, here is what happens: <bash>$ env WINEPREFIX="/home/woozle/.wine" wine "C:\Program Files\Envelope Manager\DAZzle\DAZZLE.EXE" fixme:actctx:parse_depend_manifests Could not find dependent assembly L"Microsoft.VC80.CRT" err:module:import_dll Library MSVCR80.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\Envelope Manager\\DAZzle\\EMWEIGH.dll") not found err:module:import_dll Library EMWEIGH.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\Envelope Manager\\DAZzle\\DAZZLE.EXE") not found fixme:actctx:parse_depend_manifests Could not find dependent assembly L"Microsoft.VC80.CRT" err:module:import_dll Library MSVCR80.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\Envelope Manager\\DAZzle\\RATEDLL.dll") not found err:module:import_dll Library RATEDLL.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\Envelope Manager\\DAZzle\\DAZZLE.EXE") not found fixme:actctx:parse_depend_manifests Could not find dependent assembly L"Microsoft.VC80.CRT" err:module:import_dll Library MSVCR80.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\Envelope Manager\\DAZzle\\EMGRPH4.dll") not found err:module:import_dll Library EMGRPH4.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\Envelope Manager\\DAZzle\\DAZZLE.EXE") not found fixme:actctx:parse_depend_manifests Could not find dependent assembly L"Microsoft.VC80.CRT" err:module:import_dll Library MSVCR80.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\Envelope Manager\\DAZzle\\emdbf.dll") not found err:module:import_dll Library emdbf.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\Envelope Manager\\DAZzle\\DAZZLE.EXE") not found fixme:actctx:parse_depend_manifests Could not find dependent assembly L"Microsoft.VC80.CRT" err:module:import_dll Library MSVCR80.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\Envelope Manager\\DAZzle\\EMDAZ32.dll") not found err:module:import_dll Library EMDAZ32.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\Envelope Manager\\DAZzle\\DAZZLE.EXE") not found err:module:LdrInitializeThunk Main exe initialization for L"C:\\Program Files\\Envelope Manager\\DAZzle\\DAZZLE.EXE" failed, status c0000135</bash> The problem seems to be the "manifest" which Microsoft Visual C++ now apparently compiles into every executable (I have seen similar areas from other newer Windows apps running under WINE) -- for some reason, WINE can't handle them.
There is a bug report on WINE's bug tracker and an application test report with a similar error message, dating from September 2007, so they are aware of the problem but don't seem to be doing anything about it.
Tried the solution described here, but it didn't seem to make any difference.