VCAMP140.DLL error

[rnmerchant]

I have just (apparently randomly) started getting an error message on trying to open PSP2023 (and the same thing happened with 2022). Oddly (for this error) the program did run fine just the other day.

The program fails with a message: "System Error: The code execution cannot proceed because VCAMP140.DLL was not found. Reinstalling the program may fix this problem". I did try doing a 'repair installation' and then uninstalled and reinstalled the program, without helping. Running the program as 'administrator' makes no difference.

The program does run on a different system, and searching on that system I find the dll in two locations: \windows\system32 and \windows\SysWOW64 . So I searched on the 'problem system' and indeed I find the DLL is present in those two locations.

So the error message is not quite clear - it is not that the DLL is not there, it is that PSP didn't find it.

Why would that be? Does anyone have any help for me in getting the program to run?

Thanks Richard

[rnmerchant]

Well... I did something that seems to have fixed it (hopefully permanently). I tried reinstalling a couple of the Visual C++ 2015 packages (though the downloads from the microsoft site seem to be a bit of an older build??) and repairing them.
Then I ran SFC/ Scannow which seemed to be doing something, then rebooted.

And now, lo and behold, PSP runs. Who would have guessed. I'm still curious why it happened - I suppose some program could have corrupted the DLL...