title: How to detect whether I need to install VCRedist?
body: <p>I have a question very similar to <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/203195/how-to-detect-vc-2008-redistributable">this one</a> but the answer does not work for me.</p>
  
  <p>Software I am maintaining the setup for depends on VC++ 2008 (SP1, precisely), thus I need to find a solution to install VCRedist if not yet installed.
  I understand the correct way would be to build msi with merge modules, but it's not on my hands.</p>
  
  <p>The answer of the duplicate question I am referring to (the accepted one) does not work for me because every tiny release (e.g. 9.0.30729.01 vs 9.0.30729.17) has proper GUIDs, which I am not able to guess or predict for future versions. Furthermore, I reckon that this would not detect Visual Studios and thus unnecessarily install the VCRedist Package when it's already on a developers machine. I do not want to bug anybody with this, certainly not somebody who has already a DevStudio installed.</p>
  
  <p>Now another answer says I should look in the WinSxs-folder like <code>$WINDIR\WinSxS\x86_Microsoft.VC80.CRT_</code> but this does not (yet) help me to imply SP1, or is there anything I am missing at this point ? Is there a table somewhere with the internal and "external" version numbers, so I could imply a certain minor version number ?</p>
  
  <p>I cannot believe that there is nothing provided by Microsoft for this scenario, but searching the interwebs for already far too long now brings me back to good ol' SO :)</p>