Problem starting Ops Center?

Hi folks, I've done some searching and I can't see where this problem has come up before so I guess I'll have to resort to asking :smile: . I keep getting this error when I try to run either PMDG Operations Center.exe or OpsCenterUpdater.exe :

As near as I can tell (by googling the hex code 0xc000007b) it has something to do with visual C++ libraries. I assume the T7 installer would have checked and downloaded anything that wasn't present on my system and I think that may be where the problem lies. Some time back I was trying to get an application to run which was also eluding to the need for something visual C++ related (sorry I don't even remember what it was or if I ever got it working) I think the installer in that case was supposed to fetch whatever it was but my internet connection is a bit flakey so it failed due to a timeout or something. I went hunting and installed a bunch of visual C++ runtime libraries at the time hoping to solve the problem and my gut feeling is that the earlier mess led to the PMDG installer into thinking I had what I needed already so it didn't fetch anything. No clue really...

I had 4 or 5 "Microsoft Visual C++" entries in my add/remove programs, 2005, 2008, 2010, etc. both x86 and x64 versions and later when I tried to uninstall some of that junk it reported not being able to find vcred.msi for example and I wasn't able to remove them. I found some MS utility to get around this (MicrosoftFixit.ProgramInstallUninstall.RNP.27302655801250580.1.1.Run.exe) and used it to remove all those entries thinking maybe if I ran the PMDG installer again it would detect those missing and fetch what I needed. It did in fact run the DirectX setup both times incidentally which reported my DirectX version up to date and needing no further modification. I tried the (PMDG installer) repair option, then I tried uninstalling completely and reinstalling, unfortunately I'm still getting this error.

System is Win7 pro 64, PC specs are on the left. I guess what I'd like to know is what visual C++ library version is required to get the ops center to run, or is there some way I can BS the PMDG installer into making that check again and installing whatever I need if I were to attempt another reinstall?

Thanks, and the aircraft itself seemed to activate and work fine in the sim (although I need to do some serious reading and figure out how to operate it which is of course where the fun is). Really an impressive piece of software, it's just beautiful, and I've found it to be very smooth and not bad at all on the frames so far, thank you PMDG!

Jim