Fix Mysteriously Dying Windows Programs

2018 September 3

(… in certain circumstances, at least.)

Symptom: a program seems to compile fine, but dies when run. No visible error message on the console, but the exit code is -1073741515.

Cause: MSVC install sometimes fails to install ucrtbased.dll in the right place! Most common solution on the internet is “uninstall and reinstall Visual Studio a few times until it appears”. WTF.

Workaround: Pretty sure this works:

copy "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x64\ucrt\ucrtbased.dll"
  "C:\Windows\System32"

Although as far as I can tell, this is not an encouraged approach (surprise).

(Originally posted on Tumblr.)

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