Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable

almoststew1990 · 24 Sep 2016 at 09:44

I've got nearly 20 versions of this installed going from 2005 to 2015 14.0.23026. These get installed through games on steam and AMD drivers. Is it safe to remove them all and only keep the latest version (maybe keep the latest x86 and x64)

Rroff · 24 Sep 2016 at 09:46

I think some games target specific versions so might have mixed results removing them.

NeoWave · 24 Sep 2016 at 10:29

Rroff said:
I think some games target specific versions so might have mixed results removing them.

This afaik as well. It is best just to leave them imho as the most harm they do is clog up the Uninstall or change a program list.

Cromulent · 25 Sep 2016 at 14:21

almoststew1990 said:
I've got nearly 20 versions of this installed going from 2005 to 2015 14.0.23026. These get installed through games on steam and AMD drivers. Is it safe to remove them all and only keep the latest version (maybe keep the latest x86 and x64)

No it is NOT safe to remove them. If you do some programs will stop working as they require that specific version and won't work with newer or older versions.

h4rm0ny · 25 Sep 2016 at 15:21

Cromulent said:
No it is NOT safe to remove them. If you do some programs will stop working as they require that specific version and won't work with newer or older versions.

Cromulent is correct, but I'm going to disagree with them. I remove the older versions and don't believe I've ever had a problem doing so. I loathe the cruft most of which is developers not wanting to have to test or build things with newer versions and just playing it safe with the lowest common denominator. It's a low chance that something will break, imo. Though it can happen.

marc2003 · 25 Sep 2016 at 15:29

You've got windows taking 20-30GB space and you're trying to save a few dozen MB? Just leave it alone.

Cromulent · 25 Sep 2016 at 16:21

h4rm0ny said:
Cromulent is correct, but I'm going to disagree with them. I remove the older versions and don't believe I've ever had a problem doing so. I loathe the cruft most of which is developers not wanting to have to test or build things with newer versions and just playing it safe with the lowest common denominator. It's a low chance that something will break, imo. Though it can happen.

The problem is that if a developer uses say Visual Studio 2013 to develop the program it requires the 2013 C++ redistributable. If you use Visual Studio 2015 then it requires the 2015 C++ redistributable and so on and so forth.

It is more a problem with Microsoft tying the version of Visual Studio with a version of the C++ redistributable rather than the developer not testing with older and newer versions.

C++ is a pain in the arse to develop against because there is no fixed ABI like there is for languages like C. So you can't really blame the developers in this case. It depends on the version of Visual Studio that they are using to develop their programs.

Edit: I think Microsoft are fixing this issue in later versions of Visual Studio but for the time being it is still an issue.