FreeImage doesn't work on New Windows 11 PC's Because VCOMP140.DLL Is Not Present

[EricTheRed20]

If you upgrade a Windows 10 PC to Windows 11, then it seems that VCOMP140.DLL is present, but if you buy a new PC with Windows 11 pre-installed, then VCOMP140.DLL is not included for 64 bit (in C:\Windows\System32 (which is the folder where 64 bit DLLs should be)).

FreeImage therefore doesn't work on New Windows 11 PCs

We have a large user base of people who are not very technically literate, so we can't ask them to jump through a whole lot of difficult hoops. Would it be possible to make FreeImage so that it does not use VCOMP140.DLL

[LordBenjamin]

You'd have to ask the core FreeImage team about that - this is just a dotnet wrapper around their library.

My guess would be "no" though - FreeImage is written in C and compiled using the Microsoft Visual C compiler. The DLL you mentioned is part of the Microsoft Visual C runtime, i.e. it's a core dependency of FreeImage.

If you are distributing software to end-users, you will either need to:

• Document the dependency on MSVC Runtime and tell them to install it (not an ideal user experience)
• Distribute the MSVC installer alongside the installer for your application (for example, you can merge it into your MSI installer if using)
• Recompile FreeImage.dll from the upstream source, using static linking so that the MSVC runtime is embedded inside FreeImage (I don't know how easy or hard this would be) and ship this in place of the one bundled in FreeImage.Standard

Hope this helps.