vcruntime140.dll was not found: what the file does and how to restore it

The exact wording tells you whether the file is absent, damaged or only the place where a program crashed. These are the texts Windows shows.

Read from the files inside Microsoft's installers, version 14.51.36247.0. Microsoft® C Runtime Library, Microsoft Corporation.

After installation the 64-bit file is in C:\Windows\System32 and the 32-bit file is in C:\Windows\SysWOW64 on 64-bit Windows. The names are historical: System32 holds the 64-bit files. The exported functions are the basics every Visual C++ program calls: memory copy and fill (memcpy, memset), C++ exception handling, type information for C++ objects and a few string searches.

vcruntime140.dll sits at the bottom of the Visual C++ runtime. Programs import it directly, and so does msvcp140.dll: every build of msvcp140.dll lists VCRUNTIME140.dll in its imports, and the x64 build also lists VCRUNTIME140_1.dll. That is why a missing vcruntime140.dll so often shows up right after someone copied msvcp140.dll by hand.

Below it there is only Windows. Its import table names the Universal C Runtime (the api-ms-win-crt files) and KERNEL32.dll, nothing from the redistributable. If an error names one of the api-ms-win-crt files instead of vcruntime140.dll, the problem is in Windows, not in the Visual C++ package.

The api-ms-win-crt files belong to the Universal C Runtime, which is part of Windows 10 and Windows 11 and is kept up to date by Windows Update.

The runtime files of the x64 installer, version 14.51.36247.0: 12 files that are installed and updated together. vcruntime140_1.dll is in the x64 and ARM64 packages only; 32-bit programs do not use it.

A search of the disk usually turns up several vcruntime140.dll files. That is by design: Windows components and Microsoft apps bundle their own copy of the runtime so that they keep working whatever the user installs or removes.

Winbindex, an index of the binaries in Windows installation images and updates, lists 92 distinct builds of vcruntime140.dll in 22 versions. The copy in System32 that programs share comes from the redistributable; leave the private copies where they are.

Installers and games often put their own vcruntime140.dll into their folder, and those copies stay long after Microsoft has released a newer runtime. A public DLL catalogue has collected 49 such copies, from version 14.0.22013.1 to 14.28.29304.1. The table lists each one with its checksums, so you can tell which you have.

None of them is the current version. The redistributable above installs 14.51.36247.0, newer than every copy in this list. If the check on this page finds your file here, it is most likely an old Microsoft build (confirm the Microsoft signature, because the list itself is not verified). Install or repair the redistributable; a program that keeps its own old copy in its folder will still use that copy until the program is updated.

Copies uploaded by users to a public DLL catalogue, read on 14 October 2026. We list their checksums so you can identify a file; we do not offer them for download and we did not verify each one against Microsoft's signature.