"The application failed to initialize properly" error

Hi all,

I have two applications that launching yields the following message:
Application Error: The application failed to initialize properly
(0xc0000142). I tried looking around but found only several answers to other
applications, which included some specific solutions rather than a general
one. Since the two applications that fail to run have really nothing to do
with each other, I assume the problem is somewhere in the OS configuration.

I have tried to track the app's execution with Sysinternal's Filemon, and
found the error came after the process accessed a dll called usp10.dll, but
trying other versions of that dll hadn't solved the problem. Actually, I have
another PC on which the apps do run; I had copied all the system32 dlls into
the app's folder, to see if any of my dlls ware damaged, to no avail.

Would really appreciate any solution to the problem.
TIA,
Kal