DICOM Network Services or DICOMEX Read/Write Toolkit Error: MC_Library_Initialization failed

Symptoms:

A.) DICOM Network Services Storage SCP service won't start.

-or-

B.) Attempting to create an IDLffDicomEx object results in an error like:

Possible Cause:

This issue could be caused by corrupted merge library configuration user files pointing to an incorrect IDL installation location.

To test to see if this is the problem causing the issue, start an IDL development session (either IDLDE or Command Line) and issue the following command in IDL:

LOAD_DLM,'DICOMEX'

If you then get an error similar to the one above under item (B) then corrupted local Merge library configuration files are likely the problem.

Solution:

1. Exit out of any IDL sessions currently running on your machine.
2. Delete the user's local DICOMEx configuration files.
    
   1. On Windows, delete this directory:
       

      C:\Users\YourUsername\.idl\idl\dicomex-1-XXX
       

   2. On MacOS, delete this directory: 
      
      /Users/YourUsername/.idl/idl/dicomex-1-XXX
       

   3. On Linux, find delete this directory:
      
      ~/.idl/idl/dicomex-1-XXX
      
      NOTE: ~ is a shortcut for the user's home directory (e.g. /home/joeuser)
       

3. Restart your IDL DICOM Network Services utility or your IDL programming environment and issue your IDLffDicomEx commands. At this point, the DICOMEx local configuration files will be automatically recreated, and that should hopefully resolve the problem.

Created by Unknown on 8/21/2007

Updaded by BC-US on 8/20/2025, Reviewed by XX on X/X/XXXX