How to make Maplestory work on Windows 7?

Last night I downloaded the MapleStory (an article from one of our freelancers sent to our May issue has me very excited to see recent changes), only to discover that the game will not launch on my Windows 7 machine. I looked in the forums, searched Google, asked friends. Everyone said they know how to fix it, but they were all liars. So, I searched the response of the developers themselves. Here's how you can really get MapleStory to run in Windows 7 and it's easy!

If you Google for a solution, which (like me) are forum posts and how to recommend a lot of different solutions to ignore them all. Before Nexon updated the client to be officially support Windows 7 in 2010, there were lot of problems, but today there's really only one. MapleStory requires Microsoft Visual C ++ 2008, but strangely not included in the process of installation.

To install the Microsoft Visual C ++ 2008 on your computer:

First check to see if Windows Update is listed as an option in that country. If so, you download it through there.

If not on Windows Update, download the 32 bit or 64-bit version manually from the Microsoft website, depending on whether you are running the 32 bit or 64 bit Windows 7.

Additional steps for troubleshooting:

Make sure none of the executable (game client and launch of both) are set to run in compatibility mode. Most of the guides I found were advised to run in compatibility mode, but not run MapleStory until I turned this option.

Try running the executable launcher as administrator (right click on the executable and select run as administrator).

If you've done a lot of additional settings trying to solve the problem and is probably best to simply reinstall the game.