I discovered that even if your computer has the Visual Studio 2019 Redistributable installed or something that does the same thing (e.g. the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2022 Redistributable), PHP may not be able to start.

After downloading the latest version (14.30.30704.0) and running the x86 and x64 installers, I was able to start PHP. It is possible that keeping the x64 and x86 versions in sync is unnecessary.

I hope this helps anyone else who encounters the problem.

Some versions of US are 32bit while the newer ones are 64.

 

If you're using a 32bit install of US then it won't work with the 64bit install of the c++ redistributable - and vice versa. You just need to have the right version installed for your US bit version.