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jasonp86308623
Participant
April 28, 2026
Question

InDesign 21.3 fails to launch with error 0xc0000142 on Windows (DLL / VCRuntime issue)

  • April 28, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 39 views

After updating InDesign to 21.3 it broke DLLs and will not open. Error: “The application was unable to start correctly (0xc0000142)”

 

You can repair C++ redistribution (although that is a temporary fix as InDesign will break the DLLs again)

 

Uninstalling 21.3 and installing 20.5.3 is recommended.

    1 reply

    Abhishek Rao
    Community Manager
    Abhishek RaoCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    April 29, 2026

    Hi @jasonp86308623,


    Sorry to hear you're running into this, I understand how frustrating it is when InDesign won't even launch after an update.

    I'd like to share that this behavior is already logged as a known issue, and the product team is actively working on a fix in collaboration with Microsoft. You can refer to this thread for more context: https://adobe.ly/3OOHaOU

    In the meantime, you can try resolving this by following the steps for the corrupt VCRuntime issue under the miscellaneous section in this article: https://adobe.ly/48wtX3R


    Please try this and let me know how it goes on your end, I'll be happy to assist further if needed.

    Abhishek

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