Help: Blender won’t start, “side by side configuration is incorrect”

I have Blender (an excellent free open source 3D modeling suite) running on my Windows 7 (Final) 64-bit.  During the setup I ran into a minor snag, I got the following error message:

The application has failed to start because its side by side configuration is incorrect.  Please see the application event log for more detail.

The fix is easy.

The Solution

For me all I had to do was download the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x64) and install it.

It took a second, but Blender started up just great after installation (there is an installation process, give it a few minutes and installation screens start up).

Tags: 64 bit, Blender, error message, Microsoft, Visual C++ 2008 SP1, Windows 7, x64