visual studio 2010 - Fixing the "MSVCP110D.dll is missing from your computer" issue

Question

I am facing the following (fairly common) problem: I am running my program in Debug mode in VS2010 and/or VS2012, but at startup it crashes, saying:

The programme can't start because MSVCP100D.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.

Now I found a number of possible solutions, but none of them work for me:

• Compile with /MTd instead of /MDd: actually this does solve the problem, but I am not allowed to: my program is part of a bigger program, and /MD[d] is mandatory.
• Install the VS 2010 Redistributable package: This doesn't work because I have VS 2012 installed, so this installer tells me: "A newer version of Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable has been detected on the machine."
• Finding, dragging and dropping a version of MSVCP100D.dll into the correct directory: I am not dropping unknown DLLs into places where they might interfere with other things.
• Last resort: reinstalling VS2010/VS2012: possible, but as it would also mean reinstalling lots of other packages and plugins I need, I'd like to avoid this if it's not absolutely necessary.

Are there any other options left?

Answer 1

The Visual Studio REDIST packages never deploy the DEBUG versions of the CRT files. This is by design.

With VS 2012 or later, the easiest way to deploy the DEUBG versions of the CRT is to install the "Remote Debugging Tools" package on your test machines.

For VS 2012, the latest Remote Debugging Tools package is here

For VS 2013, the latest Remote Debugging Tools package is here.

Another option is to just use application local deployment of the DLL (i.e. copy it into your app directory). Again this is only for testing purposes. For actual deployment of your application, you are required to use the non-debug versions of the CRT.

If this error is happening on your development machine, however, then you have other problems because with VS 2012 installed, you should have the VS 2012 DEBUG CRT on that machine.

UPDATE:: Sorry, I would have expected the debug CRT DLLs to be included in the remote debugging tools package along with the remote debugger bits and the Direct3D 11 Debug Device. Alas, it's not. See Preparing a Test Machine To Run a Debug Executable. You have to either use the MSMs in Program Files (x86) directory in Common FilesMerge Modules or copy the DLL-side-by-side from Program Files (x86) directory in Microsoft Visual Studio <version>VC edistDebug_NonRedist. The VS Team probably assumed you would have already been doing that, but I'll suggest to them to roll it into the remote tools package.