After installation on my Vista box, TortoiseSVN cannot start, giving an entry in event log that says:

Activation context generation failed for “C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin\TortoiseProc.exe”. Dependent Assembly Microsoft.VC90.CRT,processorArchitecture=”x86″,publicKeyToken=”1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b”,type=”win32″,version=”9.0.30411.0″ could not be found.

At first sight, the missing “Microsoft.VC90″ points to absence of Visual C++ Redistributable Package. Installing all of his versions didn’t help. After trying to work out this error, it magically disappeared and TortoiseSVN started successfully and worked well…

…until today, when I’ve upgraded to 1.5.2. Same error. Didn’t want to start. Now on two PC’s from office.

After searching for solution, found on a TortoiseSVN’s discussion lists a recipe that worked OK for me. I’ll cite it here with explanation, is given by Stefan Küng, one of TortoiseSVN developers:

try this:
uninstall TSVN, reboot, install it again.

There’s a problem with the new CRT merge module from MS: it does not recognize always that is has to update itself.

The good old way: uninstall, reboot, install. So windows95-ish.