The interim fix for this issue (and I suspect for some of the reported issues with Apache failing to initialize for Windows Server and XAMPP versions 1.6.4 and 1.6.3) is to download and install the following for Windows machines in English:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en [^]
Other languages are also available.
Perhaps a long-term fix is to recompile the Windows Binary distributable to include the C++ libraries so that they are distributed and installed as part of the XAMPP Windows binaries, or to provide additional instructions in the Readme file that instructs users to download and install the Windows Visual C++ Redistributable Package before installing XAMPP.