Q. I have installed SPSS on my Windows 8 computer and am getting the error message "The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log..." How do I fix it?

To solve this problem, you will need:

1. To know if your computer has a 32-bit or 64-bit operating system. (Rule of thumb: If your computer has 4 GB or more of RAM, your operating system is most likely 64-bit.)
2. To know if you have installed the 32-bit or 64-bit version of SPSS.

First, try the solutions recommended by IBM.

If you encounter an issue when trying to perform their recommendations -- specifically, if Windows is unable to find the install location of Visual C++ 2008 -- you may need to install Visual C++ 2008. Make sure to install the version of Visual C++ 2008 that matches the "bitness" (32- or 64-bit) of your operating system. After installing Visual C++ 2008, try to re-open SPSS again.