"The application was unable to start correctly" after including vld.h

I had this problem too, you need to add all these files to the same directory as your vld_x86.dll/vl_x64.dll:

Microsoft.DTfW.DHL.manifest

dbghelp.dll

Which came from the Win32/Win64 bin folder from Visual Leak Detector. Found this from: https://vld.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Building%20Visual%20Leak%20Detector%20from%20Source

I had this problem (this error message), too. In my case the vld_x86.dll, most likely in another than the expected version, was preinstalled and registered by some other software. (everybody likes VLD, it seems) Thus, it was loaded instead of the vld_x86.dll in the path VLD was built to. Unregistering the foreign DLL solved the problem.

Hence, you might want to check the output for loading of DLLs from exotic paths.