VS2010 command prompt gives error Cannot determine the location of the VS Common Tools folder

Question

I have installed VS2010  The installation creates the shortcut for VS2010 command prompt but when I open up the command prompt I get the error      Cannot determine the location of the VS Common Tools folder    I checked the environment variable VS100COMNTOOLS and it has value  C  Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 Common7 Tools  and the registry for HKEY local Machine Software Microsoft Visual Studio SxS VS7  is set to  C  Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0    I checked the VSvars32 bat and tried to add echo to find till where it proceeds  It fails at this command    call  GetVSCommonToolsDirHelper32 HKLM  gt  nul 2 gt  amp 1

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None of the above fixed my problem   I added  C  Windows System32  to the  Path  or  PATH  environment variable  I could use the reg    command  I also ran the  vcvarsall bat  file with no error message   My error is that I was running VS2012 Cross Tools Command Prompt instead of VS2013 Cross Tools Command Prompt    The reason being the file structure in the start menu  2010 and 2012 are under  Microsoft Visual Studio YEAR  and 2013 is under  Visual Studio YEAR   I just didn t realize this      I hope this helps someone

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The same problem occurred for me when iI was installing a python library and it said unable to find the path of Visual Studio 2008 10  I have change the PATH from environmental variables  So to change it you the following process can be adopted  Start   Computer  Properties  Advance System Settings  Environment Variables  System Variables  Here you will find path variable  If some already some path is set then you can use semicolon    to add the given path  C  Windows System32  else directly add the same

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I had the same problems in two machines  Win8 1x64 with Visual Studio Ultimate 2013  VS2013  and Win8x64 with VS2013 ultimate  Problem  Shortcut  VS2012 x86 Native Tools Command Prompt  which points to file  C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 11 0 VC vcvarsall bat which calls C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 11 0 VC bin vcvars32 bat tries to search the registry for value name  11 0    reg query   1 SOFTWARE Microsoft VisualStudio SxS VS7   v  11 0    However my machine doesn t have this value  11 0   instead it has  12 0   My solution is to run C  Program Files  x86   Microsoft Visual Studio 12 0  VC vcvarsall bat which calls C  Program Files  x86   Microsoft Visual Studio 12 0  VC bin vcvars32 bat which correctly query the registry as the following    reg query   1 SOFTWARE Microsoft VisualStudio SxS VS7   v  12 0    So changing running from C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 11 0 VC vcvarsall bat to C  Program Files  x86   Microsoft Visual Studio 12 0  VC vcvarsall bat  solved it in my case

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I had this not too long ago as a result of registry editing being blocked by a group policy   The specific problem is that reg is denied access to the registry  I solved this by replicating the  reg exe  using Microsoft Win32 Registry in a C  program  and then substituting all calls to reg  with my alternative program  You need to update    VCVarsQuery bat VsDevCmd bat VsVars32 bat   In the  VSxxxCOMNTOOLS  folder  usually resolves to something like C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio XX X Common7 Tools       static int Main string   args                try                       var targetRegistry   args 1  Substring 0  4               var targetKey   args 1  Substring 5                string targetValue   null              if  args 2  ToLower        v                                 targetValue   args 3                             else                               return 1                             var hkey   targetRegistry     HKLM    Registry LocalMachine   Registry CurrentUser              var key   hkey OpenSubKey targetKey                  var result   key GetValue targetValue               Console WriteLine                Console WriteLine key Name               Console WriteLine       0     REG SZ     2    targetValue  key GetValueKind targetValue   result               Console WriteLine                Console WriteLine                 return 0                    catch                       return 1                    In cases like this  you can also use my alternative reg implementation here

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This same problem just started occurring for me and I was able to  fix  it by updating the vcvars32 bat file located in the C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 VC bin  folder  by default    Add the following after the first line    SET VSINSTALLDIR c  Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0   SET VCINSTALLDIR c  Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 VC   SET FrameworkDir32 c  Windows Microsoft NET Framework   SET FrameworkVersion32 v4 0 30319  SET Framework35Version v3 5   And then comment out the following lines       call  GetVSCommonToolsDir     if   VS100COMNTOOLS       goto error no VS100COMNTOOLSDIR     call   VS100COMNTOOLS VCVarsQueryRegistry bat  32bit No64bit   Found this here   Note that I say fix in quotes because I haven t checked to make sure that all the appropriate variables are set properly  that said  at a cursory glance it does appear to be valid   Note that you ll have to edit the vcvars32 bat file in an elevated text editor  ie  Run as Admin  to be able to save the file in Vista and Windows 7

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So this is probably waaaaaay late to the party but the actual problem is an error or rather the repetition of the same error in three batch files   C  Program Files x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 Common7 Tools VCVarsQueryRegistry bat  C  Program Files x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 Common7 Tools vsvars32 bat  C  Program Files x86  Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 VC bin vcvars32 bat  The pattern of the error is everywhere a for loop is used to loop through registry values   It looks like this    for  F  tokens 1 2     i in   reg query   1 SOFTWARE Microsoft VisualStudio SxS VS7   v  10 0    DO        if    i    10 0             SET  VS100COMNTOOLS   k            The problem is the second occurrence of   i   The way the loop construct works is the first    variable is the first token  the next is the second and so on   So the second   i should be a   j  or whatever you want  so that it points to the value that would possibly be a  10 0    You can tell the developer wanted to use i j k as the values because in the enclosed  SET in the if  they use   k   Which would be the path   So  in short  go through all these types of loops in the three files above and change the second occurrence of   i to   k and everything will work like it s supposed to   So it should look like this    for  F  tokens 1 2     i in   reg query   1 SOFTWARE Microsoft VisualStudio SxS VS7   v  10 0    DO        if    j    10 0             SET  VS100COMNTOOLS   k            Hope this helps   Not sure if this applies to all versions   I only know that it does apply to VS 2010  SP1

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Another cause can be VS 2013 Community Update 5 installing the WRONG SHORTCUTS  it installs VS 2012 shortcuts for VS 2013   To fix it  edit the shortcuts  Rename them from 2012 to 2013  and change  11  to  12  in the path to vcvarsall   See this microsoft social post

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I also have faced the same issue  Initially tried modifying System PATH which does not worked out  Later resolved by installing Micro Visual Studio express

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Direct the Paths to the correct locations on your computer  This setup assumes you have most programs installed in a central location C  Development   For my use I did not thus eliminating the need for DEV     ECHO OFF  set DEV C  Development set QTDIR  DEV  Qt set PATH  SystemRoot   SystemRoot  system32  QTDIR  bin  echo Setting OpenSSL Env  set OPENSSL  DEV  OpenSSL set PATH  OPENSSL  bin  PATH  set LIB  OPENSSL  lib set INCLUDE  OPENSSL  include  echo Setting NASM Env  set PATH  DEV  NASM  PATH   echo Setting DirectX Env  set LIB  DEV  DirectX SDK Lib x86  LIB  set INCLUDE  DEV  DirectX SDK Include  INCLUDE   echo Setting Windows SDK Env  set WindowsSdkDir  DEV  Windows 7 1 SDK set PATH  WindowsSdkDir  Bin  PATH  set LIB  WindowsSdkDir  Lib  LIB  set INCLUDE  WindowsSdkDir  Include  INCLUDE  set TARGET CPU x86  echo Setting MSVC2010 Env  set VSINSTALLDIR  DEV  MSVC set VCINSTALLDIR  DEV  MSVC VC set DevEnvDir  VSINSTALLDIR  Common7 IDE set PATH  VCINSTALLDIR  bin  VSINSTALLDIR  Common7 Tools  VSINSTALLDIR  Common7 IDE  VCINSTALLDIR  VCPackages  PATH  set INCLUDE  VCINSTALLDIR  include  INCLUDE  set LIB  VCINSTALLDIR  lib  LIB  set LIBPATH  VCINSTALLDIR  lib  echo Setting Framework Env  set FrameworkVersion v4 0 30319 set Framework35Version v3 5 set FrameworkDir  SystemRoot  Microsoft NET Framework set LIBPATH  FrameworkDir   FrameworkVersion   FrameworkDir   Framework35Version   LIBPATH  set PATH  LIBPATH   PATH   echo Setting Perl Env  set PATH   C  Perl bin  PATH   echo Env  ready   title Qt Framework 4 8 0 Development Kit   cd  DEV    Save file as a   bat  run Visual Studio Command Prompt then execute   bat    This should fix all Environment Problems  so run configure  EDIT Almost forgot Credit where Credit is due  http   developer qt nokia com wiki Building Qt Desktop for Windows with MSVC

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I had this problem when I installed something that created a user environment PATH variable   My TeamCity build agent was running as a service under my own username and it found the user PATH variable instead of the machine PATH variable   With the wrong path variable  it couldn t find much of anything and gave this error

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I had the same issue and found the answer here   The problem is that the bat uses de reg command and it searches that in the PATH system variable  Somehow you have managed to get  C  Windows System32  out of the PATH variable  so just go to the system variables  right click  My Computer     Properties    advanced config    Environment Variables   search the PATH variable and add at the end separated by       C  Windows System32

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So  I figured out the root cause to all the problems in this thread   I originally thought it was specific to 2010 but the batch files for 2013 have the same token parsing syntax error   Basically  all of the batch files that MS distributes with their compilers from 2010 to at least 2013 have this same error   If you search all  bat files for this string     i    and replace it with     j    everything will work correctly   Basically they are trying to query the registry for different version entries to get the correct paths to use   They create a for loop that will iterate over the tokens from each line that the query pulls   There are three tokens that should come back   They use   i for the first one which would be REG SZ  to see if something was found   Then they use the same one to compare against a version string   They should be using   j to get the second token which would be 8 0 or 10 0 or 12 0 and would actually yield a good comparison   Then they correctly use   k to get the path associated with the version     Again  do the simple search and replace in all the files that have a pattern like this    for  F  tokens 1 2     i in   reg query   1 SOFTWARE Microsoft VisualStudio SxS VS7   v  12 0    DO        if    i    12 0             SET  VS120COMNTOOLS   k            and make it look like this    for  F  tokens 1 2     i in   reg query   1 SOFTWARE Microsoft VisualStudio SxS VS7   v  12 0    DO        if    j    12 0             SET  VS120COMNTOOLS   k            by changing the second occurrence of   i  which is in quotes  to   j   Hope this helps

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The issue in my case was a typo in the PATH variable  Since vsvars32 bat uses the  reg  tool to query the registry  it was failing because the tool was not found  just typing reg on a command prompt was failing for me

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I got a gnarly beast working with only the Microsoft Windows SDK v7 1 batch file SetEnv Cmd -- ie  I do not have Visual Studio vAny installed and did not have to use any of the specially prepared cmd prompts  where vsvars32 bat et al rear their ugly heads    I just have the Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7  7 1  installed with their C C   compilers  On my Xp64 box  this is the sequence I used to be able to compile one of the June 2010 DirectX SDK Audio samples    REM open a regular old cmd exe and run these 3 REM this builds the Win32  ie  x86  version of the exe  cd  C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft DirectX SDK  June 2010  Samples C   XACT Tutorials Tut02 Stream    C  Program Files Microsoft SDKs Windows v7 1 Bin SetEnv Cmd   debug  x86  xp   C  WINDOWS Microsoft NET Framework v4 0 30319 MSBuild exe  Tut02 Stream 2010 sln  p Configuration Debug  p Platform Win32   Note that using the Framework64 version of MSBuild exe prevents me from building the X64 version  due to targets    but the X86 version of MSBuild successfully built the X64 version of the same tutorial exe   REM open a regular old cmd exe and run these 3 REM this builds the X64 version of the exe  cd  C  Program Files  x86  Microsoft DirectX SDK  June 2010  Samples C   XACT Tutorials Tut02 Stream    C  Program Files Microsoft SDKs Windows v7 1 Bin SetEnv Cmd   debug  x64  2003   C  WINDOWS Microsoft NET Framework v4 0 30319 MSBuild exe  Tut02 Stream 2010 sln  p Configuration Debug  p Platform X64

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My problem was a little bit different  As mentioned by  kzfabi - a registry is made to get details of the installed VS version  So the user executing the developer command line tools exe needs admin access as well as registry editing rights  In controlled environment set up by companies you may not have these rights and cause this error

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That s a great post  Before making all the changes to vcvarsall bat  file  try running vs2010 command prompt as an administrator  If that still doesn t address the issue  try adding C  Windows System32 to the PATH environment variable  If all else fails  edit the batch file as described above

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I had same problem with Visual Studio 2010 on Windows XP  Just remove all constructions    gt  nul 2 gt  amp 1   from files    Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 VC bin vcvars32 bat  Microsoft Visual Studio 10 0 Common7 Tools VCVarsQueryRegistry bat

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For me  this was caused by the PATH environment variable being set to an empty value for my user profile   The system variable was set correctly  so I deleted the blank PATH variable from my profile and everything worked again

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In my case I d install VS Net 2015 update 2 and left the Windows 8 1 SDK box UNchecked  since I m now using Windows 10 and didn t think it necessary   However that seems to have resulted in some required registry settings being omitted   Doing a modify of VS Net 2015 from the control panel and checking the 8 1 SDK box fixed the problem

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A simple solution to solve this issue both in vs developer command prompt and cmd is to add the following line     C  Windows System32   into the system path as follows      My Pc-- properties-- Advanced-- Environment variables-- system variables    hope it solves the issue

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I got same problem but different reason  I had  reg bat  in the current directory  Renaming that into anything else solved the issue

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I ran into this same problem while doing a build on our Windows 7 build system   I was filling in for our build engineer s absence  and it was the first time I ve done it since we migrated from Windows XP to Windows 7 32-bit   The IT requirements for our build system have locked the permissions down to where it s very difficult to do the most routine operations   As it turns out  the problem was due to a lack of elevated privileges   By closing Visual Studio 2010 and re-opening it with administrator rights  Run as Administrator   the problem was fixed

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I was facing same issue  I looked into environment variable for  PATH  variable I could not found this  Then I added a variable  Path  with  C  Windows System32  value  Everything is resolved now

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I was getting the same error when trying to run a publish process through powershell on my build machine    My build machine only has the Windows SDK installed and not Visual Studio and as such it appears that I m missing some common files and registry values that are normally present when Visual Studio is installed  After looking into vsvars32 bat a bit more carefully I noticed that it was where the  Cannot determine the location of the VS Common Tools folder  error was being reported located under the GetVSCommonToolsDir label  It appears that in this batch file that since the VS7 sub-key doesn t exist on my machine it blanks out the  VS100COMNTOOLS  environment variable and reports back the specified error    In my case it appears that this error is happening for me because I don t have Visual Studio or some other necessary components installed on my build machine and thus the registry key doesn t exist  Perhaps your error is due to something similar such as 32-bit vs 64-bit registry or 32-bit vs 64-bit VS command prompt  Testing the line of code that is failing from the batch directly in the command prompt should give you a clue about why the registry or file path isn t being resolved properly

[visual-studio-2010] VS2010 command prompt gives error: Cannot determine the location of the VS Common Tools folder

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