Can't install 3Ds Max, Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable broken/missing/being a jerk

[Ona]

Alright, before you point me to some Autodesk troubleshooting site, please hear me out - this isn't the run of the mill problem.

I'm trying to install Autodesk 3Ds Max 2015 (or, really, any version of it) on my computer. I have everything in order, but as soon as it starts to install, I get about 3 minutes of a loading bar before this happens:

[IMG]http://puu.sh/9rmgU/b98e658284.jpg[/IMG]

Naturally, I looked in the log to see what went wrong and found this:

"Install Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable (x86) Failed Installation aborted, Result=1603"

I looked that up and apparently I'm not the only one with this issue. However, the one fix for it (or at least, the one fix that I understood) involved uninstalling Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable (x86) from my computer, rebooting, then redoing the installation.

Sounds pretty clear-cut to me, it's just that there's one problem...

Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable is apparently not even on my PC. Even though I literally installed it from the Microsoft website about 10 minutes ago, just to be sure, it won't show up!

[IMG]http://puu.sh/9rmqb/ca436714ea.png[/IMG]

So, I can't remove it, because I can't even bloody well find it. I've installed it around 3 times now, every time the installer for C++ 2005 gets to about 70% and then closes without so much as an error noise so I don't even know if it's working or not.

Somebody, please help! The official troubleshooting guides are useless to me and most of the alternate solutions involve all this complicated nonsense about "Editing the registry key" or something, as though I know what the heck that even means.

[djjkxbox360]

Sounds like a virus or broken Windows files. Do an anti-virus scan and also open command prompt and type "sfc /scannow" without quotation marks

[Ona]

[QUOTE=djjkxbox360;45105987]Sounds like a virus or broken Windows files. Do an anti-virus scan and also open command prompt and type "sfc /scannow" without quotation marks[/QUOTE]

Huh... didn't even consider that...

Alright, got that sfc/scannow thing happening, along with Avast!, Malewarebytes and the default security scanner.

Good thing I read this before going to work, dfgsh

UPDATE:

Didn't find any integrity voilations, but I've found some maleware (and removed it) already, going to have to do a clean sweep of this comp overnight.

[Ona]

Well, I cleaned out the maleware on my comp, installed the C++ Redistributable (again) and verified all my computer files.

Still getting the exact same problem as before.