PC, Steam, not even getting to the main menu? You might be missing a library (msvcp140.dll)

[ibmalone]

Since the update to 3.3 last night I hadn't been able to get into the game. Launcher, click play, play button disappears, nothing happens for a while, play button reappears.

"Servers are busy" I thought. Well, they are, but that wasn't the problem.

Tonight I tried the same thing. Still no. Other people are getting on. Tried reinstalling the game, still nothing.

Hunted down the EDLaunch.exe binary and tried running it directly. This time clicking on the play button still failed, but also got a popup, "The program can’t start because MSVCP140.dll is missing from your computer", apparently Steam was suppressing this.

It's part of "Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015", downloadable from Microsoft https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/confirmation.aspx?id=48145 or, you know, usually redistributed by the publisher...

After installing that I can actually get the game to run. Admittedly I'm looking at either a spinning Asp or a "can't connect to adjudication server" error, but, still, progress of a sort.

 

[Yephoo]

Hey thank you, I just solved this problem after installation of Visual C++ bala bala bala ….

Peace

 

[Nick Sticks]

When you install it via the Frontier Client the redistributables for DX9, VS2005, VS2010 and VS 2012 are usually here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Frontier\EDLaunch\Redis

 

[ibmalone]

Steam layout seems a bit different, but has: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Elite Dangerous\_CommonRedist\vcredist

Which contains directories "2010" and "2012", but no "2005" or "2015". Possibly the issue depends whether you installed through Steam or the Frontier client.

In other news I found restarting the client a much more reliable way of getting a good server conenction than just retrying to connect from the main menu.

 

[RedMcG]

You will need Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015.

The 140 in the MSVCP140.dll file name means version 14.0. And if you look here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Visual_C++#Internal_version_numbering

You'll see 14.0 refers to MSVC++ 2015.

I think Frontier upgraded their build tools but forgot to update both their Steam Depot (which only has VC2012) and possibly their launcher.

You may want to add your voice to the existing bug report:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/463093-MSVCP140-DLL-Missing-From-Computer

 

[Insects]

I always just install the .net and MSVC packages to a computer. It avoids so much drama over all the programs you will install.

Notorious for being missing and the trap is that developers never notice because that stuff automatically installs on all their machines with their standard programming and debugging packages.

It is complicated for installers to fix broken installs and bundling in the game files has its own complications.

 

[cpw]

We found out on the Linux thread a couple of days ago that they've updated their Visual C runtime library requirement to 2015 or newer. Sadly, they hadn't updated the steam metadata that says what libraries are needed as well (it was still reporting vcruntime 2012).

 

[ibmalone]

I always just install the .net and MSVC packages to a computer. It avoids so much drama over all the programs you will install.

Notorious for being missing and the trap is that developers never notice because that stuff automatically installs on all their machines with their standard programming and debugging packages.

It is complicated for installers to fix broken installs and bundling in the game files has its own complications.

Yes, common problem. If you're a large software house then there's really no obstacle to having a clean image in a VM to test your official releases, it's easier than it ever was, but the advent of software downloads seems to mean the days of the Gold release are long gone.