ucrtbased.dll is missing

Question

_{Wednesday, September 28, 2016 4:17 AM}

 I installed Visual Studio Express 2015. My system is Windows 7 service pack one. Perhaps because the OS is so old, the installer reported an error while installing Windows SDK 10.0: fatal error during installation. (Error # -2147023293)

I was able to run Visual Studio and to create a Win32 project, but when I actually tried to run it, I got the message, "The program can't start because ucrtbased.dll is missing from your computer." I looked online and saw that this file can be installed as part of the Visual C Redistributable, so I installed that, but it didn't fix the problem. I could try installing VS Express again, but it took many hours, and I have no reason to believe it would be better. Anybody got a solution?  Does anybody know why this installation would fail? 

All replies (2)

_{Wednesday, September 28, 2016 8:55 AM ✅Answered}

Hi Joymaker,

Welcome to the MSDN forum.

The ucrtbased.dll (debug) is includes in the Universal CRT, and The Universal CRT is a component of the Windows operating system. It is included as a part of Windows 10, starting with the January Technical Preview, and it is available for older versions of the operating system via Windows Update. For the detail information, you can see this blog: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2015/03/03/introducing-the-universal-crt/

For Windows 7, you can get the Universal CRT through install the Windows 10 SDK, Visual C++ 2015 redistributable or the Universal CRT. Since you cannot install the Windows 10 SDK, please have a try with the following to troubleshot your issue:

1. Download this update of the Universal CRT from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49093 or https://www.microsoft.com/en-sg/download/details.aspx?id=49077, all pending patches are installed in the Windows update then reboot the computer.

 2. Check the existing of the ucrtbased.dll on your computer, if you have installed successfully, you should can find at least two of the ucrtbased.dll (x86 and x64) and copy the corresponding ucrtbased.dll to your application’s debug directory.

Meanwhile, to find the root cause of the failed installation about the Windows 10 SDK, I need your help to the installation log. Please use http://aka.ms/vscollect to gather the installation logs. After using it, you will find vslogs.zip under %temp% folder. Please upload the file to https://onedrive.live.com/ and share the link here.

Best regards,

Sara

We are trying to better understand customer views on social support experience, so your participation in this interview project would be greatly appreciated if you have time. Thanks for helping make community forums a great place. Click HERE to participate the survey.

_{Tuesday, May 16, 2017 7:43 PM | 1 vote}

re: "It is included as a part of Windows 10, starting with the January Technical Preview" -- that does not appear to be true, at least with current Windows 10 installations, or with the installations I have. I have searched my Windows 10 installations for both ucrtbase.dll and ucrtbased.dll and they are not present.

One way to obtain these (the only way I know of) is to install VS 2015. I was thinking that VS 2017 would also install these files but that does not appear to be the case, at least for me.