The technology has existed for decades to install applications without having to make potentially dangerous alterations to systemwide shared state. There's only so much you can blame on app developers. In the year 2011, shipping an OS that allows an application to corrupt the registry is just as stupid, if not stupider, than shipping an OS that allows the application to grab or generate arbitrary pointers into memory allocated to other processes.
No one should have to know what "reregister the library" even means.
The problem here is that you think 'corrupted registry keys' means that the computer is unusable. A corrupted registry key just means that a setting hasn't been saved right - it could be as trivial as whether an app starts fullscreen or windowed.
The GP's statement did not say that the system was faulty, just that he was experiencing errors and he reinstalled. On enquiry, they weren't system errors, but errors around the installation of a program, for which he sledgehammered the result. You don't need the "Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable" to run Windows, or a great many things on windows. It wasn't the operating system blue-screening.
No one should have to know what "reregister the library" even means.
We're in 2011, no-one should have to know what 'engine oil change' means either, but someone still has to know how to do it.
> The problem here is that you think 'corrupted registry keys' means that the computer is unusable.
Well, this guy's computer threw errors when he tried to install an app. "Unusable", no, just shitty. I would call that broken, but as you demonstrate, Windows apologists have always had lower standards.
> We're in 2011, no-one should have to know what 'engine oil change' means either, but someone still has to know how to do it.
That wouldn't be a very good argument if there was only one carmaker that made a car that required oil changes, while every other carmaker in the world had been selling perfectly functional no-oil-change-required cars since the 1990's.
You'll also notice I never said I reinstalled because of the error I was having (I eventually found a FixIt to do it), but the reinstalls were for other things.
The corrupted registry is just indicative of a problem which really should not happen.
a) If a corrupted registry key is stopping something happening, then why doesn't it take any action to try and resolve it?
b) If an error code has a documented fix online, why was I not taken to it, or, even better, the fix placed in the distributable?
c) Why should I have to remember random error codes at all? Why doesn't it give me an error message I can understand and at least try and take some action on?
What I find a bit odd about this whole thread is that you seem to take issue with the idea that one of Microsoft's own libraries not working means the OS is otherwise fine. Why not take the view that it's a library that's not distributed with the main install, but is a part of Windows? The Visual C++ libraries are used all the time. I feel like if we were talking about Ubuntu, where the packages are always separated, we wouldn't be drawing this invisible line between what is and isn't the OS.
At the risk of showing myself to be the inexperienced user that I am, I have had the same problem but have not yet been able to resolve it. Lewisham, please could you tell me how/where you found the fixit? Thanks so much.
No one should have to know what "reregister the library" even means.