No, they were never part of the Windows distribution. Deploying them yourself is a difficult requirement.
Of course, it may seem that they are. Starting with msvcrt.dll in the system32 directory, it has the same name as the C ++ runtime script in Visual Studio versions prior to VS2002 (VS6 and earlier). This, however, is a private copy of a CRT that is used by Windows executables. And it is protected by the file system protection function in Windows, preventing the destruction of old installers by the operating system.
This, of course, often works by accident. There are many programs that need Microsoft CRT, so it is unlikely that the user ran the installer before installing the DLL. It is clear that you cannot depend on this general accident.
Similarly, for Windows 8, the pre-installed Microsoft.VCLibs.110 package corresponds to the package that is needed for a Store application written in C ++. But for the same reason as above, the Microsoft Store programs were also built on VS2012, just like yours. What will happen in the upcoming VS2013 is now a little dirty, we will soon find out.
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