Fix 'Missing DLL' Errors When Installing NetDrive on Windows

You install NetDrive on a Windows machine, click the tray icon, and instead of the drive manager opening, Windows shows a dialog reporting that a file like MSVCP140.dll or VCRUNTIME140.dll can’t be found. This is not a corrupted download or a NetDrive bug — it means the machine is missing a Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable package that NetDrive depends on. It shows up most often on freshly imaged workstations, minimal Windows Server installs, and machines where an admin stripped optional components to shrink a deployment image.

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• Works on Windows 8, 8.1, 10, 11, and Server 2012–2022
• One-time dependency fix, no reinstall of NetDrive needed
• Same fix applies to fresh installs and after Windows updates

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Confirm This Is Your Issue

The symptom is specific: NetDrive installs without an error, but the moment you try to launch it — from the tray icon, Start menu, or a fresh boot — Windows shows a small dialog along the lines of “The program can’t start because MSVCP140.dll is missing from your computer” or the same message for MSVCP120.dll or VCRUNTIME140.dll. NetDrive’s UI never appears at all.

If instead NetDrive opens but a specific drive won’t mount, that’s a different issue — see Fix NetDrive Not Auto-Mounting on Startup or Fix Slow S3 Directory Listing instead.

Why This Happens

NetDrive’s Windows build depends on the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable packages — both the 2013 (vcredist12) and 2015–2022 (vcredist14) versions, in both 32-bit and 64-bit form. Most consumer Windows installs already carry these because other software installed them as a side effect. Machines that don’t hit this error are typically:

• Freshly imaged corporate laptops with a minimal software baseline
• Windows Server 2012/2016/2019/2022 installs used as a lightweight file-access box, with no other GUI applications ever installed
• VMs cloned from a stripped-down template

The Fix: Install All Four Redistributables

Download and run all four installers, even if you’re only sure about your OS’s bit-ness — some of NetDrive’s helper components load the 32-bit runtime regardless of whether Windows itself is 64-bit:

• vcredist12_x86.exe
• vcredist12_x64.exe
• vcredist14_x86.exe
• vcredist14_x64.exe

1. Download all four files.
2. Run each installer and accept the default options. If an installer reports the package is already present, that’s fine — skip to the next one.
3. Restart the machine once all four have completed. A restart is not always required, but it clears out any handle Windows is still holding on the old (missing or partial) runtime state.
4. Launch NetDrive again from the Start menu or tray icon.

To confirm what’s already installed before running anything, open Control Panel → Programs and Features and look for entries named “Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 Redistributable” and “Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2022 Redistributable,” each listed separately for x86 and x64. Missing any one of the four is enough to trigger the launch failure.

For IT Admins Deploying to Many Machines

If you’re pushing NetDrive out with the MSI installer across a fleet — see Deploying NetDrive via MSI for Windows IT Admins for the full deployment flow — add the four redistributable installers to the same deployment script ahead of the NetDrive MSI, using their standard silent flags:

vcredist14_x64.exe /install /quiet /norestart

Running them silently before the NetDrive MSI means the dependency is already satisfied by the time NetDrive’s own installer finishes, and end users never see the missing-DLL dialog at all.

Once the redistributables are in place, the drive manager opens normally and existing drive connections reconnect on their own.

Wrap-up

A missing-DLL dialog on first launch almost always means one of the four Visual C++ Redistributable packages didn’t make it onto the machine — not a broken NetDrive install. Installing all four, in both architectures, resolves it in under a minute and doesn’t require reinstalling NetDrive itself. For fleet deployments, bake the redistributable install into your provisioning script so nobody hits this dialog in the first place.

— Casey, NetDrive