Windows has been shipping an up-to-date, modern CRT in the box for a decade now (Win10+), and MinGW will even dynamically link to it by default. Even on out-of-support OSes like Vista and Win7, users who have all the security updates installed will have it. So you have to unwind all the way back to WinXP for a version of Windows that doesn't have uCRT out of the box.
There's absolutely no reason to statically link CRT in a Win32 app today. Especially not if your goal is to minimize .exe size.
There's absolutely no reason to statically link CRT in a Win32 app today. Especially not if your goal is to minimize .exe size.