I suggested it because it worked for me the other day for something. It might have actually been your editor. I don't remember now. Regardless, it's a quick thing he could try and if it doesn't work, then he hasn't done anything particularly invasive to the machine, and he can easily delete it all. No worse off than before.

Too bad MS didn't think it would be a good idea to go ahead and at least give you the option as a developer to link in the appropriate parts of the library. Or install it as a basic library within Windows.