error LNK2019 unresolved external symbol WinMain 16 referenced in function tmainCRTStartup

Question

While I am running the simple code as below I have two errors as following    include  lt iostream gt   include  lt string gt  using namespace  std   template  lt class Type gt  class Stack   public      Stack  int max  stack new Type max    top -1   maxsize max         Stack  void   delete   stack       void Push  Type  amp val       void Pop  void   if  top gt  0  --top       Type amp  Top  void   return stack top          friend ostream amp  operator lt  lt   ostream amp   Stack amp    private      Type  stack      int top      const int maxSize      template  lt class Type gt  void Stack  lt Type gt    Push  Type  amp val        if  top 1 lt maxsize          stack    top  val      Errors      MSVCRTD lib crtexew obj    error LNK2019  unresolved external symbol  WinMain 16 referenced in function    tmainCRTStartup     What Should I do

User · Answer

If your project is Dll  then the case might be that linker wants to build a console program  Open the project properties  Select the General settings  Select configuration type Dynamic Library there  dll

User · Answer

Besides changing it to Console   SUBSYSTEM CONSOLE  as others have said  you may need to change the entry point in Properties -  Linker -  Advanced -  Entry Point  Set it to mainCRTStartup    It seems that Visual Studio might be searching for the WinMain function instead of main  if you don t specify otherwise

User · Answer

I m not sure where to post this answer of mine but I think it s the right place  I came across this very error today and switching the subsystems didn t change a thing   Changing the 64bit lib files to 32bit  x86  did the trick for me  I hope it will help someone out there

User · Answer

i don t see the main function   please make sure that it has main function   example    int main int argc  TCHAR  argv          hope that it works well

User · Answer

If you use Unicode Character Set  but the entry wasn t set  you can specify  ENTRY  wWinMainCRTStartup

User · Answer

If you are having this problem and are using Qt - you need to link qtmain lib or qtmaind lib

User · Answer

Thats a linker problem   Try to change Properties -  Linker -  System -  SubSystem  in Visual Studio    from Windows   SUBSYSTEM WINDOWS  to Console   SUBSYSTEM CONSOLE   This one helped me

User · Answer

Include  lt tchar h gt  which has the line    define  tWinMain wWinMain

User · Answer

If you actually want to use  tWinMain   instead of main   make sure your project relevant configuration have   Linker-  System -  SubSystem    Windows  SUBSYSTEM WINDOWS  C C   -  Preprocessor -  Preprocessor Definitions    Replace  CONSOLE with  WINDOWS In the c cpp file where  tWinMain   is defined  add    include  lt Windows h gt   include  lt tchar h gt

User · Answer

Your tried to turn that source file into an executable  which obviously isn t possible  because the mandatory entry point  the main function  isn t defined  Add a file main cpp and define a main function  If you re working on the commandline  which I doubt   you can add  c to only compile and not link  This will produce an object file only  which needs to be linked into either a static or shared lib or an application  in which case you ll need an oject file with main defined     WinMain is Microsoft s name for main when linking   Also  you re not running the code yet  you are compiling  and linking  it  C   is not an interpreted language

User · Answer

As the others mentioned you can change the SubSystem to Console and the error will go away   Or if you want to keep the Windows subsystem you can just hint at what your entry point is  because you haven t defined    tmainCRTStartup  You can do this by adding the following to Properties -  Linker -  Command line       ENTRY  mainCRTStartup    This way you get rid of the console window

User · Answer

If you are using CMake  you can also get this error when you set SET GUI TYPE WIN32  on a console application

User · Answer

The erudite suggestions mentioned above will solve the problem in 99 99  of the cases   It was my luck that they did not   In my case it turned out I was including a header file from a different Windows project   Sure enough  at the very bottom of that file I found the directive    pragma comment linker    subsystem Windows     Needless to say  removing this line solved my problem

[c++] error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol _WinMain@16 referenced in function ___tmainCRTStartup

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