[SOLVED] 'ImportError: DLL load failed while importing controller_wrappers: The specified module could not be found.' when importing qiskit-aer

'ImportError: DLL load failed while importing controller_wrappers: The specified module could not be found.' when importing qiskit-aer

I am trying to run

from qiskit-aer import Aer

but that returns the error

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\cr18222\PycharmProjects\pythonProject\testing.py", line 1, in <module>
    from qiskit_aer import Aer
  File "C:\Users\cr18222\PycharmProjects\pythonProject\.venv\Lib\site-packages\qiskit_aer\__init__.py", line 69, in <module>
    from qiskit_aer.aerprovider import AerProvider
  File "C:\Users\cr18222\PycharmProjects\pythonProject\.venv\Lib\site-packages\qiskit_aer\aerprovider.py", line 20, in <module>
    from .backends.aer_simulator import AerSimulator
  File "C:\Users\cr18222\PycharmProjects\pythonProject\.venv\Lib\site-packages\qiskit_aer\backends\__init__.py", line 17, in <module>
    from .aer_simulator import AerSimulator
  File "C:\Users\cr18222\PycharmProjects\pythonProject\.venv\Lib\site-packages\qiskit_aer\backends\aer_simulator.py", line 24, in <module>
    from .aerbackend import AerBackend, AerError
  File "C:\Users\cr18222\PycharmProjects\pythonProject\.venv\Lib\site-packages\qiskit_aer\backends\aerbackend.py", line 33, in <module>
    from ..noise.noise_model import NoiseModel, QuantumErrorLocation
  File "C:\Users\cr18222\PycharmProjects\pythonProject\.venv\Lib\site-packages\qiskit_aer\noise\__init__.py", line 241, in <module>
    from .noise_model import NoiseModel
  File "C:\Users\cr18222\PycharmProjects\pythonProject\.venv\Lib\site-packages\qiskit_aer\noise\noise_model.py", line 38, in <module>
    from ..backends.backend_utils import BASIS_GATES
  File "C:\Users\cr18222\PycharmProjects\pythonProject\.venv\Lib\site-packages\qiskit_aer\backends\backend_utils.py", line 30, in <module>
    from .controller_wrappers import aer_initialize_libraries
ImportError: DLL load failed while importing controller_wrappers: The specified module could not be found.

I'm running on:

qiskit-aer version: 0.15.1

Python version: 3.11

OS: Windows 11

I'm not sure why this is happening because on my Mac I had the exact same packages and this didn't happen, and it doesn't seem to be a common problem.

Solution

I fixed this by updating my Microsoft Visual C++ redistributable.