“The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect…”

So, Windows 10 has updated itself and now MS Office won’t run. In fact, half the programs on the pc won’t run. Not Word, not Excel, nothing. Each time you open a program, you get a box declaring Error 1701 and side by side failure. Checking the updates, you see that a Visual C++ Redistributable installation took place but attempting to uninstall it results in another useless 1701 error. Checking the error logs, you can see the problem lies with an xml file in the manifests directory.

The solution is to delete (or move for safety, just in case) that file.  But changes to a system protected directory is not a simple one step operation.  Here are the steps required, starting from an elevated command prompt, changing the default directory to C:\windows\winsxs\manifests:

After a reboot, Windows should boot and behave normally.