Visual Studio can t build due to rc exe

Question

I ve searched online and couldn t find anything that resembled to my issue   I created an empty C   project and added a main cpp with a return and I can t get it to build  Here is the message I receive    1 gt ------ Build started  Project  Project1  Configuration  Debug Win32 ------ 1 gt LINK   fatal error LNK1158  cannot run  rc exe             Build  0 succeeded  1 failed  0 up-to-date  0 skipped              Is there somewhere within VS2012 where I can specify where to find this executable  I have installed the Windows 7 SDK and I have this executable at   C  Program Files Microsoft SDKs Windows v7 0 Bin   I come from Code  Blocks and using mingw-gcc without any trouble  but lately I ve been needing VS for managed implementations so I hope someone has an idea

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My answer to this quesiton  Modify file C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 14 0 Common7 Tools vcvarsqueryregistry bat The content of  GetWin10SdkDir From  REM ---------------------------------------------------------------------------  GetWin10SdkDir   call  GetWin10SdkDirHelper HKLM SOFTWARE Wow6432Node  gt  nul 2 gt  amp 1  if errorlevel 1 call  GetWin10SdkDirHelper HKCU SOFTWARE Wow6432Node  gt  nul 2 gt  amp 1  if errorlevel 1 call  GetWin10SdkDirHelper HKLM SOFTWARE  gt  nul 2 gt  amp 1  if errorlevel 1 call  GetWin10SdkDirHelper HKCU SOFTWARE  gt  nul 2 gt  amp 1  if errorlevel 1 exit  B 1  exit  B 0  to  REM ---------------------------------------------------------------------------  GetWin10SdkDir   call  GetWin10SdkDirHelper HKLM SOFTWARE Wow6432Node  gt  nul 2 gt  amp 1  if errorlevel 1 call  GetWin10SdkDirHelper HKCU SOFTWARE Wow6432Node  gt  nul 2 gt  amp 1  if errorlevel 1 call  GetWin10SdkDirHelper HKLM SOFTWARE  gt  nul 2 gt  amp 1  if errorlevel 1 call  GetWin10SdkDirHelper HKCU SOFTWARE  gt  nul 2 gt  amp 1  if errorlevel 1 exit  B 1  setlocal enableDelayedExpansion set HostArch x86 if  quot  PROCESSOR ARCHITECTURE  quot    quot AMD64 quot    set  quot HostArch x64 quot    if  quot  PROCESSOR ARCHITECTURE  quot    quot EM64T quot    set  quot HostArch x64 quot    if  quot  PROCESSOR ARCHITECTURE  quot    quot ARM64 quot    set  quot HostArch arm64 quot    if  quot  PROCESSOR ARCHITECTURE  quot    quot arm quot    set  quot HostArch arm quot     endlocal  amp  set PATH  WindowsSdkDir bin  WindowsSDKVersion  HostArch   PATH   exit  B 0  Modify this single place will enable the support for all Windows 10 sdk along with all build target of visual studio  including  VS2015 x64 ARM Cross Tools Command Prompt VS2015 x64 Native Tools Command Prompt VS2015 x64 x86 Cross Tools Command Prompt VS2015 x86 ARM Cross Tools Command Prompt VS2015 x86 Native Tools Command Prompt VS2015 x86 x64 Cross Tools Command Prompt  They are all working

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Add to your environment variable window sdk 8 1 path     C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 8 1 bin x64   then open Visual studio x64 Native tools command prompt and enter      vcvarsall bat

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I m on Windows 10 x64 and Visual Studio 2017   I copied and pasted rc exe and rcdll dll from   C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 8 1 bin x86   to  C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 14 0 VC bin amd64   it s works with    qt creator 5 7 1

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We hit this issue with our CMake Visual Studio 2015 builds after also installing VS2017 on the machine  The correct solution in our case is to specify the Window Kit version  8 1  to the Visual Studio Command Prompt - otherwise you get the Windows 10 Kit by default which doesn t include rc exe in the bin directory   e g  Start Menu- Visual Studio 2015- VS2015 x64 Native Tools Command Prompt   comspec   k  C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 14 0 VC vcvarsall bat  amd64 8 1   Note the 8 1 option on the end

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This is even easier than that with Visual Studio 2017  Follow these instructions  https   docs microsoft com en-us visualstudio install modify-visual-studio to modify using Microsoft Visual Studio Installer   Once inside the Microsoft Visual Studio Installer  click modify under your installed Visual Studio package  make sure the Desktop development with C   is checked  and the MFC and ATl support  x86 and x64   under summary

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In my case  VS 2019 on Windows 10 x64  I followed mostly what it was said in the answers but pasted rc exe and rcdll dll from C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 bin 10 0 18362 0 x86 to C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 14 0 VC bin  which is where link exe is

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Here is my almost similar case  I have VC2010 working project under Win7 32bit  I make clean install of VC2013 under Win8 1 64bit After successful converting of my project from VC2010 to VC2013  during 1st compilation the following error rise  Finished generating code LINK   fatal error LNK1158  cannot run  rc exe   Solution 1  Delete whole line     lt ExecutablePath Condition           gt     lt  ExecutablePath gt     in element      lt PropertyGroup gt     in NameOfYourSolution vcxproj file in notepad before to run VC2013 Solution 2  Copy only two files  rc exe and rcdll dll from    c  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 8 1 bin x86     to    c  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 12 0 VC bin     and compilation will be successful   Note  a It is not need to touch any PATH or other Windows or VC environment variables  b    Platform Toolset     Project Property Pages      Configuration Properties      General  will be automatic set to    Visual Studio 2013  v120      not change it to    Visual Studio 2010    to be able to continue to develop your project under VC2013 concepts

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In my case  I had a mix and match error between projects created in VS2015 and VS2017   In my  vcxproj file  there s this section called PropertyGroup Label  Globals     I had a section for TargetPlatformVersion 10 0 15063 0   When I removed the TargetPlatformVersion  that solved the problem   Sorry I can t copy and paste the block here  but stackoverflows coding format did not allow that

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Maybe project file was touched by VS2017  Then when you link the project in 2015  LINK   fatal error LNK1158  cannot run  rc exe   can brake the build   In vcxproj try to   1  replace    lt WindowsTargetPlatformVersion gt 10 0 17763 0 lt  WindowsTargetPlatformVersion gt  with   lt WindowsTargetPlatformVersion gt 8 1 lt  WindowsTargetPlatformVersion gt   2  remove       lt VCProjectVersion gt 15 0 lt  VCProjectVersion gt   3  replace     lt PlatformToolset gt v141 lt  PlatformToolset gt  with     lt PlatformToolset gt v140 lt  PlatformToolset gt

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I m using Windows 7 with VS 2013  Update 3  and Intel Parallel Studio XE Composer Edition for Fortran Windows  Update 5   Out of the box I had the same issue     Once I fixed the missing rc exe problem I had another issue   The linker was missing kernel32 lib   I corrected both issues by updating the Intel Composer Options  TOOLS- Options   - Intel Composer XE- Visual Fortran- Compilers    For the Win32 tab I added   Executables  C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 8 0 bin x86   just before   PATH    Libraries  C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 8 0 Lib win8 um x86   at the end   For the x64 tab I added   Executables  C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 8 0 bin x64   just before   PATH    Libraries  C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 8 0 Lib win8 um x64   at the end   Update     I was also missing some SDK header files  winver h and winapifamily h    I added the following to the same TOOLS- Options    area   For both the win32 and x64 tabs  Includes  C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 8 0 Include um C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 8 0 Include shared

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I got the OP s link error about rc exe when trying to execute pip install inside a bash task within an Azure DevOps pipeline that I was using to build a Python package from source with C   extensions  I was able to resolve it by adding the path to rc exe inside the bash task just before calling pip install  like so   PATH   c Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 bin 10 0 18362 0 x64   PATH   That was inside an Azure job that was using vmImage   windows-2019  for its agent  i e   Windows Server 2019 with Visual Studio 2019

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I ve encountered this issue recently  I have both VS 2015 and VS 2017 installed  Windows kits 8 1 and 10 installed   Command prompt from VS 2017 works as expected  rc exe is visible  In VS 2015 this is not true  Actually  vcvarsall bat script from VS 2015 does add a path to Windows 10 kit to PATH variable  but it adds a slightly wrong path  It adds path to   C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 bin x86    while the actual path is   C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 bin 10 0 17763 0 x86    It seems that updating Windows 10 kit  or installing VS 2017  led to this issue   So the solution is simple  just create symbolic links in  C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 bin  folder pointing to the corresponding folders in the underlying folder  e g  a symbolic link  x86  for folder  10 0 17763 0 x86    x64  for  10 0 17763 0 x64  etc

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This might be a little outdated  But if copying the rc exe and exdll dll did not work  there is a chance that the windows sdk is not installed properly even if the windows sdk folder exists  You can update the sdk for win 8 in the following page  http   msdn microsoft com en-US windows hardware hh852363 After re-installing the sdk  the problem would get solved  Also make sure that platform toolset is set properly

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This rc exe error can occur if the Visual C   compiler and the Windows 10 SDK versions don t correspond to the same Visual Studio year  In general  the solution is to make sure you have on your system  and are using in the compilation  VC   and Windows SDK for the visual studio year you are using  For instance  if you have Visual Studio 2017 or 2019  and you installed Build Tools 2015 without selecting to install its own 2015 Windows SDK  default installation does not install it    and are trying to use it to compile  you may run into this problem  In my case  I already had Visual Studio 2017  When I tried to use Build Tools 2015 to compile a python library  or probably any program   this same  rc exe  error occurred  I read that the VS2015 14 0 C   compiler can glitch if it tries to use the Windows 10 SDK from Visual Studio 2017  I uninstalled Build Tools 2015  and reinstalled it  this time as a custom installation  selecting to install both visual C   and Windows 10 SDK components  This fixed the issue  UPDATE  I just looked at Build Tools 2015 again  and apparently there is no custom installation option anymore  If so  installing Visual Studio 2015 with C   and Windows SDK components should also work  Edit  commenter has found the customizable build tools installer

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From what I have found  if you have a windows 7 OS  doing the following steps will fix the problem   1  go to C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft SDKs Windows v7 1A Bin  2  then copy RC exe and RcDll from this file  3  go to C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 12 0 VC bin and paste the two files you have  copied into it   I had the same problem  and the above posted solution did not work  My solution was derived from it  and it worked for me  if the ones above do not work you can give this one a try

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This can be caused by a vcxproj that originated in previous versions of Visual Studio OR changing the Platform Toolset in Configuration Properties -  General   If so  possible Solution   1  Go to Configuration Properties -  VC   Directories  2  Select drop down for Executable Directories  3  Select  Inherit from parent or Project Defaults

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I was able to make it work for me also this way in windows   Set your environment variable to point to the location of your rc exe  assuming you re using x86 version      C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 bin 10 0 18362 0 x86   You can easily set your environment variable using      C   setx path   path  C  Program Files  x86  Windows   Kits 10 bin 10 0 18362 0 x86     Restart your Qt Creator Clean and Rebuild

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Found this on Google    I would assume that in your case you would copy rc exe and rcdll dll to visual studio 2012 vc bin or wherever you have it installed   Part 2  FIX  LINK   fatal error LNK1158  cannot run    rc exe     Add this to your PATH environment variables        C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 8 0 bin x86   Copy these files      rc exe   rcdll dll   From     C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 8 0 bin x86   To     C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 11 0 VC bin   Or I also found this  Microsoft left a few things out of their MSVT package  Since no one knows whether they were left out by mistake or for license reasons  no one with MSVC is too interested in giving them out  A few Google searches turn up some tricky sources  Fortunately  Microsoft has finally wised up and solved this problem and many more   http   msdn microsoft com vstudio express support faq default aspx pricing  http   msdn microsoft com vstudio express support install   A good amount of MSVT missing files are there but the missing SDK files aren t   and this  I had the same problem which I solved by doing this    Installing the Microsoft  Net Framework 2 0 Adding the path of the  NET Framework files  for me  C  WINDOWS Microsoft NET Framework v2 0 50727   to Global compiler settings   Programs   Additional Paths within Code  Blocks    Now I can build and link resource files without errors

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I just figured out one  out of the 3 in total  projects in my VS2010  SDK7 1  solution  projects are linked in a sequential linear dependency chain   had a  rc file in the project files that was empty   Removing the empty  rc file  from the project  without deleting it  solved the  fatal error LNK1158      cvtres exe  problem   Update  The following copy fixed the problem    xcopy  C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 VC bin cvtres exe   C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 VC bin x86 amd64     This will enable WinSDK7 1  via MSBuild  to be able to compile  rc files into the executables

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In my case the error was due to a bad  setting in a vcxproj  The vcxproj was from a third party  so I m not sure how it got in that state   Specifically  for one of the platform profile combos  the platform folder was missing from the Windows SDK bin folder    lt PropertyGroup Condition     Configuration    Platform     Release x64   gt    lt ExecutablePath gt   VCInstallDir bin x86 amd64   VCInstallDir bin   WindowsSdkDir bin NETFX 4 0 Tools   WindowsSdkDir bin x86    is correct  where   lt PropertyGroup Condition     Configuration    Platform     Release x64   gt    lt ExecutablePath gt   VCInstallDir bin x86 amd64   VCInstallDir bin   WindowsSdkDir bin NETFX 4 0 Tools   WindowsSdkDir bin    was incorrect  Might need to scroll to the end of the code boxes to see the difference   Note also  that for some strange reason   WindowsSdkDir bin x64  did NOT work for me  Tried to figure out why  when rc exe definitely exists in that folder  but I gave up   In my opinion  the solutions from previous posters that involve copying rc exe all over the place are wrong  because your project will not work on anyone else s machine  If you fix up the paths in the project correctly  it should work on any machine with a correct installation of the Windows SDK

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In my case  I installed the Windows SDK 10586 via Visual Studio 2015 - gt  Modify  then the following paths are installed   C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 bin arm64 rc exe C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 bin x64 rc exe C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 bin x86 rc exe

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For Visual Studio Community 2019  copying the files in the answers above  rc exe rcdll dll   to C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 Community VC Tools MSVC 14 21 27702 bin Hostx86 x86 did the trick for me

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I m on Windows 10 Pro x64  VS 19    When trying to install mod wsgi for apache in cmd   C   gt python -m pip install mod wsgi   This is the error I was getting from my command prompt   LINK   fatal error LNK1158  cannot run  rc exe   error  command  C   Program Files  x86   Microsoft Visual Studio 14 0  VC  BIN  x86 amd64  link exe  failed with exit status 1158   I had to copy rc exe  amp  rcdll dll from     C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 10 bin 10 0 18362 0 x86   and add it to     C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 14 0 VC bin x86 amd64   result from cmd  C   gt python -m pip install mod wsgi Collecting mod wsgi Using cached mod wsgi-4 7 1 tar gz  498 kB  Installing collected packages  mod-wsgi Running setup py install for mod-wsgi     done Successfully installed mod-wsgi-4 7 1   Hope this helps someone

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I had the same problem on VS 2013 and was able to fix it by changing the Platform Toolset    You can find it in project settings  general   E g  switching Platform Toolset to VS 2010 will cause VS to use the Windows v7 0A SDK   You can check which SDK path is used by adding this to your prebuild event   echo using SDK   WindowsSdkDir

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I m on Windows 7 x64 and Visual Studio 2017  I get this error trying to compile a cython script  That s how I solved  I copied and pasted rc exe and rcdll dll from   C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 8 1 bin x86   to  C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 14 0 VC bin x86 amd64

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quot Error  LNK1158 cannot run  rc exe quot   could be resulted from your project was opened by newer MS VS version  For instance  your project was created in VS 2015  then later was opened by 2017  Then later your project is opened in 2015  To resolve this issue  open yourProjectName vcxproj  look for WindowsTargetPlatformVersion  and change to the correct VS version For VS 2015  it should be  8 1 for VS 2017  it should be 10 0 17763 0

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If you really need to use the SDK Windows 10 with Visual Studio 2015  you have to download an older version on sdk-archive  Newer version of the SDK changed the place of the rc executable and MSBuild of Visual Studio 2015 update 3  latest version  can t locate it  At least the version 10 0 14393 795 of the SDK Windows is still compatible with Visual Studio 2015

[visual-studio-2012] Visual Studio can't build due to rc.exe

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