Games not launching due to MSVCP120.dll errors, constant, seemingly random blue screen crashes,

Question

I recently was gifted Postal 2 on steam by a friend, upon trying to launch the game would constantly prompt "The code execution cannot proceed because MSVCP120.dll was not found. Reinstalling the program may fix this problem" or some variation thereof. Apparently this is a uncommon, but not unheard of occurrence with this game in particular so I thought nothing of it and followed some simple guides that allegedly solved this problem, but it didn't work. Another game I recently got also has the same issue (Titanfall 2 to be specific)

I've tried everything I can think of, watching countless tutorials, manually downloading the dll's, reinstalling microsoft visual studio 2013, 2015 all the way up to the newest edition as well as running "sfc /scannow" (and even Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth for good measure) in the command prompt.

At some point during this process my computer would constantly blue screen with seemingly no explanation, and at complete random, either happening soon after startup or after a few hours of use with the error code changing almost every time (one that I managed to catch was "UNEXPECTED_KERNAL_MODE_TRAP") I checked if windows needed updates, updated my graphics card drivers, cleaned out any dust from my fans, I even unplugged everything and tried to look inside my computer to see if anything was loose, but I didn't build this computer so its hard to say if its a hardware issue or not. I've tried repairing the visual studio through the installer multiple times, even going as far as restoring my windows to when I hadn't tried playing my new games, but nothing has worked. Interestingly out of all my friends I'm the only one who has had this issue and I'm also the only one who uses Windows 11, as opposed to 10. My computer never crashed prior to this issue and is only 2-3 months old. I'm completely stumped and I'd rather not have to take it into some kind of repair shop if I can avoid it.

Answer 1

I've tried everything I can think of, watching countless tutorials, manually downloading the dll's, ...

If you have manually downloaded dlls from a questionable source on the internet you may have created the problem.

It's also possible that your software needs a 64-bit version of msvcp120.dll and you installed a 32-bit version. Or vice versa. Or put them in the wrong location.

msvcp120.dll is a VC++ runtime file that should ordinarily be installed by using the Microsoft redistributables available from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist?view=msvc-170#visual-studio-2013-vc-120--no-longer-supported. Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions are available.

Have you tried uninstalling/removing anything that you previously installed and running a complete malware/virus scan?

Do you have any backups of your system that you can restore to a state prior to any changes that you made? Or an available system restore point?

In any event, if you cannot resolve the problem yourself you will likely need professional assistance.