LINK fatal error LNK1104 cannot open file D MyProj exe

Question

Using Visual Studio 2010  when I build   run my application in short intervals I often get the following error  If I just wait a minute or two and try again it works fine  Unlocker claims no handle is locking the executable file  How can I discover what s locking it  If it s Visual Studio itself  what should I do to make it stop  or alternatively to release the file   1 gt ------ Build started  Project  MyProj  Configuration  Release Win32 ------     1 gt InitializeBuildStatus  1 gt   Creating  Release MyProj unsuccessfulbuild  because  AlwaysCreate  was specified  1 gt ClCompile  1 gt   All outputs are up-to-date  1 gt   SomeFile1 cpp 1 gt ResourceCompile  1 gt   All outputs are up-to-date  1 gt LINK   fatal error LNK1104  cannot open file  D      MyProj exe  1 gt  1 gt Build FAILED  1 gt  1 gt Time Elapsed 00 00 00 94            Build  0 succeeded  1 failed  0 up-to-date  0 skipped

User · Answer

You probably had a stray build process that was locking the executable  and it  the stray process  didn t get cleaned up  In that case  shut down visual studio  open up process explorer  and nuke every process you can find that is related to visual studio   Then open up visual studio again and try rebuilding your project

User · Answer

I just had thesame problem  With me the exe was still running but I could not end it with the Task Manager  Just by restarting VS  it worked for me

User · Answer

the file can be locked because it is being run now  Try killing the process with a task manager

User · Answer

Mine is that if you set MASM listing file option some extra selection  it will give you this error     Just use    Enable Assembler Generated Code Listing   Yes Sg  Assembled Code Listing   ProjectName  lst   it is fine   But any extra you have issue

User · Answer

I m aware this is quite old but I just had the same problem with Visual Studio 2010 all patched up so others may still run into this   Adding my project path to  Exluded Items  in my AVG anti-virus settings appears to have fixed the problem for me   Try disabling any anti-virus resident shield and see if it fixes the problem   If so  add your project path to excluded directories in your AV config

User · Answer

Like Jonathan said   yes  renaming can help to work around this problem  But  e g  I was forced to rename target executable many times  it s some tedious  and not good   The problem lies there that when you run your project and later get an error that you can t build your project  - it s so because this executable  your project  is still runnning  you can check it via task manager    If you just rename target build  some time later you will get the same error with new name too and if you open a task manager  you will see that you rubbish system with your not finished projects   Visual studio for making a new build need to remove previous executable and create new instead of old  it can t do it while executable is still runinng  So  if you want to make a new build  process of old executable has to be closed    it s strange that visual studio doesn t close it by itself and yes  it looks like some buggy behaviour      It s some tedious to do it manually  so you may just a bat file and just click it when you have such problem   taskkill  f  im name of target executable exe   it works for me at least  Like a guess -  I don t close my program properly in C    so may be it s normal for visual studio to hold it running   ADDITION  There is  a great chance to be so   because of not finished application  Check whether you called PostQuitMessage  in the end  in order to give know Windows that you are done

User · Answer

Usually  this means that your program is locked and might not be killed through task manager or process explorer  I met a similar case that my program had an exception during running and triggered the windows error reporting which locked the program  For the case that windows error reporting locks the program  you can go to control panel- System and Security- Action Center- Problem Reporting Settings to set  Never check for solutions   Hope it helps

User · Answer

The error comes  at least sometimes  from paths that are too long  In my project simply reducing the output file path does the job   Properties Configuration Properties General Intermediate Directory   Seems that I have hit the 250 character path limitation

User · Answer

Working with Bjarne Stroustrup Programming Principles and Practice Using C    FLTK  example i got the same error but after like 1 hour i got an idea  i tracked one of the libs already seen in Project Properties -  Linker -  Input -  Additional Dependencies  in my case i tracked the kernel32 lib to see where was located and saw there were many kernel32 lib s in  different folders  So i started copy the FLTK libs in those folders and the last one i tried worked  Visual Studio 2013 Express found the fltkd lib and the code worked   In my case the correct route was C  Program Files  x86  Windows Kits 8 1 Lib winv6 3 um x86  I don t know how to set that route inside Visual Studio   Not sure if that Windows kits folder was created when i installed Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and  NET Framework 4  ISO  http   www microsoft com en-us download details aspx id 8442  Hope that helps you people

User · Answer

Had this issue after a reinstall today  Make sure the Application Experience service is started and not set to disabled  If its set to manual  I believe VS will start it

User · Answer

Just to add another solution to the list  what I ve found is that Visual Studio  2012 in my case  occasionally locks files under different processes   So  on a crash  devenv exe might still be running and holding onto the file s   Alternatively  as I just discovered   vstestrunner or vstestdiscovery might be holding onto the file as well   Kill all those processes and it might fix up the issue

User · Answer

You might have not closed the the output  Close the output  clean and rebuild the file  You might be able to run the file now

User · Answer

I ve concluded this is some kind of Visual Studio bug  Perhaps C Johnson is right - perhaps the build process keeps the file locked   I do have a workaround which works - each time this happens - I change the Target Name of the executable under the Project s properties  right click the project  then Properties Configuration Properties General Target Name    In this fashion VS creates a new executable and the problem is worked around  Every few times I do this I return to the original name  thus cycling through  3 names   If someone will find the reason for this and a solution  please do answer and I may move the answer to yours  as mine is a workaround

User · Answer

I have just run into the same issue with VS2013  creating device drivers in C     and none of the above seemed to fix the issue   However  I have just discovered that in my case the issue appears to have been VMWare-related     I was running a VMWare workstation client with a shared folder defined on the VM on my entire C  drive   When I disabled the shared folders on the VM Settings  VS2013 was able to happily build my  exe files     My new process is    1  Disable the shared folder on the vm  VM Settings   Options   Shared Folders - and uncheck the checkbox  2  Run the build on the host PC 3  RE-enable the shared folder  and proceed from there   Hopefully this might help someone else    BTW  the errors you receive are that the  exe  or other files  are locked or require Administrator permission  but that is a red herring - It seems to me that the VMWare share is causing those files to appear as locked

User · Answer

I had the same problem  however using Codeblocks  Because of this problem i quited programming because everytime i just wanted to throw my computer out of the window   I want to thank user963228 whos answer is really a solution to that  You have to put Application Experience on Manual startup you can do it by searching services in windows 7 start menu  and then find Application Experience and click properties    This problem happens when people want to tweak theyr windows 7 machine  and they decide to disable some pointless services  so they google some tweaking guide and most of those guides say that Application Experience is safe to disable   I think this problem should be linked to windows 7 problem not VS problem and it should be more visible - it took me long time to find this solution   Thanks again

[visual-studio] LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file 'D:\...\MyProj.exe'

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