Circular dependency errors from KERNEL32.DLL?

Question

Recently I've had a problem that seemingly every DLL I've opened with Dependency Walker gives an error like:

(Dependency Walker Module Error - "c:\windows\syswow64\MSVBVM50.DLL" will fail to load due to circular dependencies.)

I'm using MSVBVM50 as an example, but this happens with loads of other DLLs as well. After clicking OK and letting it open, this is what happens:

It takes a little while to load, I think eventually it reaches some maximum depth & just stops loading any further (seeing as it doesn't hang/crash).

This circularity roots in API-MS-WIN-CORE-PROCESSTHREADS-L1-1-0.DLL which depends on KERNEL32.DLL etc. KERNEL32 is a core part of Windows... How is this possible / what does it mean? Can I fix it?

Running on Windows 10.

Answer 1

Apparently this is a different symptom of the same underlying problem as this question:

Dependency Walker with kernel32.dll on Windows 10

And as also noted in a comment on the question, Dependency walker is pretty out of date at this point and has fallen behind modern details of Windows.