I built and installed Tcl 8.4.16 on Windows XP SP3:

  nmake /f makefile.vc
  nmake /f makefile.vc install

which installed Tcl in  C:\Program Files\Tcl as expected.  When I tried to run tclsh84.exe, I got the error,

  Runtime Error!
  Program: C:\Program
  R6034
  An application has made an attempt to load the C runtime library incorrectly.

This is apparently because the manifest was missing.

Please update the install target in makefile.vc to copy tclsh84.exe.manifest to C:\Program Perhaps tclreg11.dll.manifest should be copied too, but I am not enough of a Windows expert to know for sure.

Workaround:

After installing, copy to the C:\Program folder.

Manifests are indeed built into the executable and/or the dll. Starting with Windows 8.1 this is even more strict, Tcl is recently enhanced to do that correctly. Therefore, It surely works correctly now. See: [651e828a52]