TLDR; Update civil pro, or turn on HTTP Activation for .NET

Its always fun when Microsoft decides to do something unexpected that causes issues to an application. In this case, its the recent update 1903. This update can cause the following error message to appear – basically a complaint that file nativerd.dll is missing in the inetsrv directort;

For those who care about such things, the problem is that the Civil Pro authentication (login) uses an aspNet membership provider. The new Microsoft update changes something in the background which affects the Http provider necessary for it to work.

While its easy to fix, we expect that next Windows update, the same thing will happen. For that reason we have issued an update to versions 10.65.xx. We will likely issue one for 10.64 as well. This update completely rewrites the authentication layer so the aspNet dependency is removed. So just update your Civil Pro, and not only will you get the latest bug fixes, you will also be protected from this little Microsoft induced heart attack.

If you just want a quick fix, and you have the necessary permissions to do so, just go to Turn Windows features on or off (hit the windows key to search, and just start typing it). Find the latest version of .Net and select HTTP Activation. Refer below.