VC Redist (x86 or x64) 2015 vs 2017

26Jun/180

VC Redist (x86 or x64) 2015 vs 2017

I've got a brand new laptop at work and I didn't bother installing archaic versions of Visual Studio. Instead, VS Community 2017 was installed and, as part of it's due dilligence, it installs the prior VC Redistributibles to allow older applications to run. Think of these as dll-hell packages that provide the supporting libraries (glue) that VC++ compiled programs need to interface with the current Windows OS.

Anyway, when trying to install MySQL Workbench I was presented with the following pane:

Sure, I'll install VC 2015 redist, I'm obviously missing it! Oh wait.. I'm not..

0x80070666 - Another version of this product is already installed. Installation of this version cannot continue. To configure or remove the existing version of this product, use Add/Remove Programs on the Control Panel. Nice. Another version is actually NOT installed... another 'newer' version is, but it's an entire major version apart! Anyway, let's go see what we have installed...

VC Redist 2017, of course... thanks to VS 12017 itself. What happens if I remove it? Good question... regardless you can re-download the 2017 redistributibles here. I therefore removed the 2017 and then successfully installed 2015!

And the world was a happier place... then again, with MySQL Workbench installed I still couldn't see the database I was expecting... but that's another story.