How do I stop Deus Ex from installing the MSVC redist package at every launch?

Question

Why is my copy of Deus EX installing the Microsoft package every time I start it up?

How do I stop this behavior?

Answer

Game released on Steam can contain an install script that is run each time the game is launched. It contains a list of registry key and the program to run if the registry key is not set. If the program run successfully, the registry key is supposed to be set. So, what I suspect is that for whatever reason, this key is never written in your registry.

What you can do, is try to search for this script (it is usually called installscript.vdf, the name may change, but the extension will probably stay the same) in the game directory. Then you open it, it should look something like that:

"InstallScript"
{
    "Run Process"
    {
        "DirectX"
        {
            "HasRunKey"     "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\..."
            "process 1"     "%INSTALLDIR%\\DirectX\\DXSETUP.exe"
            "command 1"     "/silent"
            "NoCleanUp"     "1"
        }
    }
}

Then, you open regedit and you set the registry key that is referenced by the HasRunKey label. I don't know which value you need to enter, I think that any value will be fine, but you may have to experiment.

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