“Side-By-Side” configuration is incorrect in Windows 8

Question

I'm trying to install the Application Certification Kit for WinRT. So far, I got everything else for the SDK installed and have Visual Studio 2012 and friends, but I can't get this certification kit to install. It continually says

The application has failed to start because it's side-by-side configuration is incorrect....

It says to check the eventlog, but I see no events relating to this.

The program in question is here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/apps/jj572486 (the download on the right)

What could be missing? I've heard this is caused by C++ redistributables not being installed, but how can I tell which one? And wouldn't a C++ development environment have taken care of this?

Answer 1

You miss a Visual C++ runtime.

Run the Command prompt with admin rights and run this command:

SxsTrace Trace -logfile:SxsTrace.etl

Now run the programm which causes the SideBySide error.

Go back to the command prompt press ENTER to generate the SxsTrace.etl. Now type this:

sxstrace Parse -logfile:SxSTrace.etl -outfile:SxSTrace.txt

Now open the SxSTrace.txt trace and look which VC++ runtime is missing.

If you are unsure, please upload the complete SxSTrace.txt

Answer 2

Despite the very misleading wording on that page, it's actually an ARM only executable. I opened it in ILSpy, which indicated that it was a pure .Net executable, but also targeted for ARM only. Despite the optimistic wording on that page, it is a WinRT(tablet)-only executable.