Servicing Director Application Error: "...api-ms-win-crt... is missing..."

Servicing Director Application Error: "...api-ms-win-crt... is missing..."

The program can't start because api-ms-win-crt-runtime-l1-1-0.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.

Note this file name above is just one of many files, all beginning with "api-ms-win-crt".  You may have an error on a different "api-ms-win-crt" file, where the word "runtime" in the file name may be another word, such as "string" or "process".

Root Cause:

This occurs when machines have not Windows updates, most notably Microsoft Office updates.

The missing file is a Microsoft provided file, related to the Microsoft product Visual Studio C++.

When performing an upgrade of Servicing Director, the Microsoft provided prerequisite Microsoft Visual Studio C++ 2015 is installed if it is not already found to be installed.  However, in some instances, the install of C++ hangs, showing a message about installing but nothing is being installed in the background.

Cancel ling the install at this time will ask you to reboot your machine and upon rebooting, it finishes install of Servicing Director. When attempting to open Servicing Director, you get the error from some Microsoft issue related to the prior C++ installation.

Workaround:

  1. If present, uninstall the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable (x86) - 14.0.23026 from the Windows programs list.
  2. Reboot the Windows system.
  3. Log in to Windows as local Windows administrator.
  4. Install Windows updates for all possible updates. You may need to restart Windows as requested by some Windows updates, and then more Windows updates will be become available.
  5. Download the C++ directly from Microsoft and Install this downloaded C++ by right-clicking and run as Administrator. The link for the install of C++ is:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=48145

If there is any problem during these Windows updates above, use Microsoft support resources to resolve them. 

After you have the C++ installs successfully, then return to the Servicing Director installation. 

ArticleNumber:

000043500