Side-by-Side assembly, windows 7, visual c++

Question

Hey guys so I made a small program in visual c++ 2008 so that other people could use.

I sent the exe that was located in the debug folder of the project to my friends.

When they tried clicking it this is what they got:

The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log or use the command-line sxstrace.exe tool for more detail.

Does anyone know how I can fix this?

Maybe a build/compile option in Microsoft Visual Studios 2008/2010?

Or will they have to download something?

Answer 1

First step is to do a "Release" build. When you do a debug build your are linked to the Debug version of the CRT (C Runtime). Windows definitely does not come with the debug CRT (unless your friends install VS2008 also) and you are not allowed to redistribute the Debug CRT version.

Simply doing a release build may be enough. VS 2008 has been around long enough that your friends computers may already have the release version of the CRT.

If this does not work, point your friends to http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29 so they can download and install the files they need.

And if that is not enough, you may need to keep track of which service pack of VS 2008 you built with because that may affect which version of the CRT they must download and install.

Anyways, good luck. Hope this helps.