[aidenn0]

I thought msvcrt shipped with windows as early as XP; was I wrong?

[kazinator]

Even earlier; but that's a private system library you're not supposed to use.

Raymond Chen explains it: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20140411-00/?p=12...

Microsoft's new Universal C Run Time addresses the problem of there not being a C library on Windows that is for public use (every compiler vendor providing their own).