PHP 7: Missing VCRUNTIME140.dll

Question

I have an error when I start PHP 7 on Windows. When I run php on the command line, it returns a message box with system error:

The program can't start because VCRUNTIME140.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.

After that, CLI is crashing.

As I don't want to install a DLL file from an external website, I don't know how to fix this!

PHP version: 7.0.0alpha1 VC14 x64 Thread Safe

Answer 1

On the side bar of the PHP 7 alpha download page, it does say this:

VC9, VC11 & VC14 More recent versions of PHP are built with VC9, VC11 or VC14 (Visual Studio 2008, 2012 or 2015 compiler respectively) and include improvements in performance and stability.

• The VC9 builds require you to have the Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 x86 or x64 installed

• The VC11 builds require to have the Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 x86 or x64 installed

• The VC14 builds require to have the Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015 x86 or x64 installed

^{There's been a problem with some of those links, so the files are also available from Softpedia.}

In the case of the PHP 7 alpha, it's the last option that's required.

I think that the placement of this information is poor, as it's kind of marginalized (i.e.: it's basically literally in the margin!) whereas it's actually critical for the software to run.

I documented my experiences of getting PHP 7 alpha up and running on Windows 8.1 in PHP: getting PHP7 alpha running on Windows 8.1, and it covers some more symptoms that might crop up. They're out of scope for this question but might help other people.

Other symptom of this issue:

• Apache not starting, claiming php7apache2_4.dll is missing despite it definitely being in place, and offering nothing else in any log.
• php-cgi.exe - The FastCGI process exited unexpectedly (as per @ftexperts's comment below)

Attempted solution:

• Using the php7apache2_4.dll file from an earlier PHP 7 dev build. This did not work.

(I include those for googleability.)