MBCS Error building MFC C++ project with Visual Studio - c++

I opened my existing MFC project using Visual Studio and when I build I get the following error message:
Error 1 error MSB8031: Use of MBCS encoding in MFC projects require an additional library to be downloaded and installed. Please see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=286820 for more information. C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\v120\Microsoft.CppBuild.targets
What is this about?


This error message is due to the missing MBCS MFC package. Starting with Visual Studio 2013, MBCS portion of the MFC library has been broken out of the Visual Studio product into its own separate download. Installing this package and rebuilding should fix the problem.
The download is available here
More information about this change is available here
Update for Visual Studio 2015
Starting with Visual Studio 2015, the entire MFC C++ library (including the MBCS pieces) is an optional install component. While installing VS2015, if you select C++ and MFC, you will also get the MBCS library.


Instead of installing an add-on, you may consider changing the character set from MBCS to Unicode.
This is done in the project properties as is depicted below.


For Visual Studio 2015:
According to Redistributing the MFC Library article on MSDN, there are no mfc140.dll files in redist directory (c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\redist\x86).
The mfc140.dll files were omitted from the redistributable files
directory in Visual Studio 2015 RTM. You can use the versions
installed by Visual Studio 2015 in the Windows\system32 and
Windows\syswow64 directories instead.

Related

ATL headers missing when using the VC++ 2015 toolchain on Visual Studio 2017

I am using Visual Studio 2017 for a C++ project (created with VS 2015). I get the following error:
1>C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\atlmfc\include\afx.h(345): fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'atltrace.h': No such file or directory
How can I install the ATL/MFC headers of the VS 2015 toolchain?
Details
"Platform Toolset" setting (at "Project properties/General/Platform Toolset")
set to "Visual Studio 2015 (v140),
changing the platform toolset to "Visual Studio 2017 (v141) compiles fine.
Files on disc
The include directory for VS 2015 (C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\atlmfc\include\) contains afx*.h files but no atl*.h files.
These missing files seem to belong to VC_ATL.Headers.msi ("Visual C++ Library ATL Headers Package") (which I checked on another machine with those files). I could not get the respective msi to install. (I took the msi from the other machine.) Error: "To install this product, please run Setup.exe. [...]".
The respective directory for VS 2017 (C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Professional\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.11.25503\atlmfc\include\) does contain those files.
Installer
"Windows Desktop Development with C++/VC++ 2015.3 v140 toolset for desktop (x86,x64)" is checked.
It seems to me that the v140 toolset is missing the ATL/MFC headers.
"Windows Desktop Development with C++/MFC and ATL support(x86 and x64)" does not seem relevant, it seems to be about the VS 2017 version.
VC++ redistributable seems irrelevant since those do not contain the header files.

There is a blog post about the Visual C++ Build Tools 2015. The build tools are also released in a standalone version without the need to install Visual Studio 2015:
The Build Tools are the same C++ tools that you get with Visual Studio 2015 but they come in a scriptable standalone installer that only lays down the tools you need to build C++ projects.
Microsoft has included ATL/MFC.
They can be downloaded from http://landinghub.visualstudio.com/visual-cpp-build-tools. Make sure to select "ATL and MFC" which is deselected by default.

Afx Unsupported in Windows 10/ Visual Studio 2015

I retargeted an MFC solution from Visual Studio 2013 to Visual Studio 2015, but when I built it I received an error telling me the compiler could not find afxdisp.h normally found under VC->atlmfc->include . -- Of course I copied the file from the VS 2013 location, but I was wondering why it was missing? Does anyone know?

My mistake, MFC is an addon in VS, and I did not have all of it (only had ATL). I relaunched installer went to custom install and clicked MFC classes. I also installed the Multibyte MFC library from the Visual Studio Website. It is not available in the custom options.

Error while trying to compile simple C++ code in Visual C++ 2010 [duplicate]

I've installed Visual Studio 2012 Release Preview, and it appears to be fine, but now when I try to use Visual Studio 2010 to compile C++ projects, I get the following error message:
LINK : fatal error LNK1123: failure during conversion to COFF: file invalid or corrupt
I'm not 100% sure of this, but it seems to be related to projects that have .rc (resource) files in them.
I've tried repairing Visual Studio 2010 from Add/Remove programs and rebooting, but this has no effect.
I also get the same error if I use Visual Studio 2012 RC to compile the C++ projects when set to use the Visual Studio 2010 toolset. Upgrading to the Visual Studio 2011 toolset fixes the problem (but of course I don't want to do this for production code).
Update: I've uninstalled Visual Studio 2012, rebooted, and the problem still persists! Help!

This MSDN thread explains how to fix it.
To summarize:
Either disable incremental linking, by going to
Project Properties
-> Configuration Properties
-> Linker (General)
-> Enable Incremental Linking -> "No (/INCREMENTAL:NO)"
or install VS2010 SP1.
Edits (#CraigRinger): Note that installing VS 2010 SP1 will remove the 64-bit compilers. You need to install the VS 2010 SP1 compiler pack to get them back.
This affects Microsoft Windows SDK 7.1 for Windows 7 and .NET 4.0 as well as Visual Studio 2010.

If disabling incremental linking doesn't work for you, and turning off "Embed Manifest" doesn't work either, then search your path for multiple versions of CVTRES.exe.
By debugging with the /VERBOSE linker option I found the linker was writing that error message when it tried to invoke cvtres and it failed.
It turned out that I had two versions of this utility in my path. One at C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\BIN\cvtres.exe and one at C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\cvtres.exe. After VS2012 install, the VS2010 version of cvtres.exe will no longer work. If that's the first one in your path, and the linker decides it needs to convert a .res file to COFF object format, the link will fail with LNK1123.
(Really annoying that the error message has nothing to do with the actual problem, but that's not unusual for a Microsoft product.)
Just delete/rename the older version of the utility, or re-arrange your PATH variable, so that the version that works comes first.
Be aware that for x64 tooling builds you may also have to check C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\amd64 where there is another cvtres.exe.

Check the version of cvtrs.exe:
dir "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe"
Wrong version:
date: 03/18/2010
time: 01:16 PM
size: 31,048 bytes
name: cvtres.exe
Correct version:
date: 02/21/2011
time: 06:03 PM
size: 31,056 bytes
name: cvtres.exe
If you have wrong version you should copy the correct version from:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
and replace the one here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
i.e.
copy "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe"

According to this thread in MSDN forums: VS2012 RC installation breaks VS2010 C++ projects, simply, take cvtres.exe from VS2010 SP1
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
or from VS2012
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
and copy it over the cvtres.exe in VS2010 RTM installation (the one without SP1)
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
This way, you will effectively use the corrected version of cvtres.exe which is 11.0.51106.1.
Repeat the same steps for 64-bit version of the tool in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\amd64\cvtres.exe.
This solution is an alternative to installation of SP1 for VS2010 - in some cases you simply can't install SP1 (i.e. if you need to support pre-SP1 builds).

If you have installed Visual Studio 2012 RC, then it installed .NET 4.5 RC.
Uninstall .NET 4.5 RC, and install the version you need (4.0 for VS 2010). This should clear up any problems you are having.
This solved the same problem. There is no need to uninstall Visual Studio.

It's because of .NET Framework 4.5 is replacing .NET Framework 4.0.
I uninstalled Visual Studio 2010 several times with no luck. When I removed .NET Framework 4.5 and reinstalled Visual Studio 2010 it went fine.
See Uninstall Visual Studio 11 completely to do a fresh install.

For me, setting 'Generate Manifest' to 'No' fixed it. (Also fixed with /INCREMENTAL:NO)

If you're using x64, here's a resource will help:
This happens because Microsoft .NET 4.5 is incompatible with Visual C++ 10. The workaround is to ensure that you run the .NET version of cvtres.exe rather than the Visual C++ version. I did this by renaming the Visual C++ versions of those files and copying the .NET versions in their place.
1. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
2. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\amd64\cvtres.exe
1. C:\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\cvtres.exe
2. C:\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\cvtres.exe

I solved this problem eventually by doing a full uninstall of VS2012 RC, followed by a full uninstall of VS2010, then a reinstall from scratch of VS2010.
It took forever, but I'm now able to compile C++ projects in VS2010 again.

The issue was magically resolved for me by removing .NET 4.5, and replacing it with .NET 4.0. I then had to repair Visual Studio 2010 - it being corrupted along the way somehow.
I had previously installed, and then un-installed, Visual Studio 2012 - which may be related to the issue.

I have not installed Visual Studio 2012, but I still got this error in Visual Studio 2010. I got this resolved after installing Visual Studio 2010 SP1.

I had the same problem with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and it was solved by the method described in this youtube video
The video suggests to rename the file cvtres.exe in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin (in my Win7X64 matchine) to cvtres-old.exe

It didn't work for me after Enable Incremental Linking -> "No (/INCREMENTAL:NO)", but it works for me after I deleted the rc file.

+1 to user Short for an answer that worked for me!
I tried to do some debugging of this with msbuild /v:diag, and I'm seeing that MSBuild is trying to embed a manifest in the executable, with <somename>.dll.embed.manifest.res on the linker command line, where that is a resource file built from <somename>.dll.embed.manifest. But the manifest file is an empty Unicode text file. (That is, a two-byte file with the Unicode 0xFEFF prefix)
So the root problem seems to have something to do with that manifest file not being generated, or it being used when <somename>.dll.intermediate.manifest should have been used.
An alternate solution seems to be to turn off the "Embed Manifest" option under Properties, Manifest Tool, Input and Output.

To summarize:
Step1
Project Properties
-> Configuration Properties
-> Linker (General)
-> Enable Incremental Linking -> "No (/INCREMENTAL:NO)"
if step1 not work, do Step2
Project Properties
-> Configuration Properties
-> Manifest Tool (Input and Output)
-> Enable Incremental Linking -> "No"
if step2 not work, do Step3
Copy file one of:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio
11.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio
12.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio
13.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
Then, replace to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio
10.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
With me, do 3 step it work

As of January 2014, for some reasons I got installed .NET Framework 4.5.1, I don't know if due to a third party software installation or to an automatic update.
On January 29th, I got installed one component and I started receiving the
LINK : fatal error LNK1123: failure during conversion to COFF: file invalid or corrupt
message. At that time, I solved by avoiding the incremental link.
On Jan. 31st, I got installed another component of .NET Framework 4.5.1 and the incremental link trick did not work anymore. I then installed the Visual Studio 2010 SP1, but afterwards the problem became:
Error 6 error LNK1104: cannot open file 'msvcrtd.lib'.
I think the SP1 messed up my Visual Studio 2010 installation.
So I uninstalled .NET Framework 4.5.1, installed .NET Framework 4.0 and uninstalled and then reinstalled Visual Studio 2010. That worked for me.

Even inspite of installing Service pack you are getting the error then try removing/renaming the cvtres.exe in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin folder. This has worked for me.

I set Enable Incremental Linking to "No (/INCREMENTAL:NO)" and it doesn't work for me.
Next I've changed:
Project Properties
-> Configuration Properties
-> General
-> Platform Toolset -> "Visual Studio 2012 (v110)"
and it works for me :)

Reinstalling CMake worked for me. The new copy of CMake figured out that it should use Visual Studio 11 instead of 10.

I was using the Windows SDK for core Win32 programming and had .NET 4.5 installed for "unknown" reasons. I have uninstalled that and installed 4.0 like previous answers and yeah, it worked for me too.
Just am flabbergasted that I had to use the useless .NET framework for building Win32 apps using the SDK.

I solved this by doing the following:
In a command prompt, type msconfig and press enter.
Click services tab.
Look for "Application Experience" and put tick mark (that is, select this to enable).
Click OK. And restart if necessary.
Thus the problem will go forever. Do build randomly and debug your C++ projects without any disturbance.

For those of you looking for a solution for this problem with the OpenGL SuperBible 6th source code samples, the solution is building in Release instead of Debug. All projects have disabled the incremental linking option in the Release version.

My problem was that I've had two paths on my PC that contained the same libraries. Both paths were added to the Additional Library Directories in Configuration Properties -> Linker -> General. Removing one of the paths solved the problem.

I had the same problem after updating of .NET:
I uninstalled the .NET framework first,
downloaded visual studio from visualstudio.com and selected "repair".
NET framework were installed automatically with visual studio -> and now it works fine!

I tried a few times and finally solved the problem by uninstalling several times the VS2010. I think I hadn't uninstalled all the files and that's why it didn't work for the first time.
In the installation of VS2012, it is said that if you have VS2010 SP1 you can't work on the same project in both programs. It is recommended to have only one program.
Thanks!

MSVCP120d.dll missing

Every time I want to compile my Visual Studio project I get the message that MSVCP120d.dll is missing. Google can't help me. I already installed some redistributables but they didn't help. I also found this:
Msvcp120d.dll Debug version of C++ runtime. No redistribution
allowed.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn448963(v=vs.85).aspx

From the comments, the problem was caused by using dlls that were built with Visual Studio 2013 in a project compiled with Visual Studio 2012. The reason for this was a third party library named the folders containing the dlls vc11, vc12. One has to be careful with any system that uses the compiler version (less than 4 digits) since this does not match the version of Visual Studio (except for Visual Studio 2010).
vc8 = Visual Studio 2005
vc9 = Visual Studio 2008
vc10 = Visual Studio 2010
vc11 = Visual Studio 2012
vc12 = Visual Studio 2013
vc14 = Visual Studio 2015
vc15 = Visual Studio 2017
vc16 = Visual Studio 2019
The Microsoft C++ runtime dlls use a 2 or 3 digit code also based on the compiler version not the version of Visual Studio.
MSVCP80.DLL is from Visual Studio 2005
MSVCP90.DLL is from Visual Studio 2008
MSVCP100.DLL is from Visual Studio 2010
MSVCP110.DLL is from Visual Studio 2012
MSVCP120.DLL is from Visual Studio 2013
MSVCP140.DLL is from Visual Studio 2015, 2017 and 2019
There is binary compatibility between Visual Studio 2015, 2017 and 2019.

I have found myself wasting time searching for a solution on this, and i suspect doing it again in future. So here's a note to myself and others who might find this useful.
If MSVCP120.DLL is missing, that means you have not installed Visual C++ Redistributable Packages for Visual Studio 2013 (x86 and x64). Install that, restart and you should find this file in c:\Windows\System32 .
Now if MSVCP120D.DLL is missing, this means that the application you are trying to run is built in Debug mode. As OP has mentioned, the debug version of the runtime is NOT distributable.
So what do we do?
Well, there is one option that I know of: Go to your Project's Debug configuration > C/C++ > Code Generation > Runtime Library and select Multi-threaded Debug (/MTd). This will statically link MSVCP120D.dll into your executable.
There is also a quick-fix if you just want to get something up quickly: Copy the MSVCP120D.DLL from sys32 (mine is C:\Windows\System32) folder. You may also need MSVCR120D.DLL.
Addendum to the quick fix: To reduce guesswork, you can use dependency walker. Open your application with dependency walker, and you'll see what dll files are needed.
For example, my recent application was built in Visual Studio 2015 (Windows 10 64-bit machine) and I am targeting it to a 32-bit Windows XP machine. Using dependency walker, my application (see screenshot) needs the following files:
opencv_*.dll <-- my own dll files (might also have dependency)
msvcp140d.dll <-- SysWOW64\msvcp140d.dll
kernel32.dll <-- SysWOW64\kernel32.dll
vcruntime140d.dll <-- SysWOW64\vcruntime140d.dll
ucrtbased.dll <-- SysWOW64\ucrtbased.dll
Aside from the opencv* files that I have built, I would also need to copy the system files from C:\Windows\SysWow64 (System32 for 32-bit).
You're welcome. :-)

I have the same problem with you when I implement OpenCV 2.4.11 on VS 2015.
I tried to solve this problem by three methods one by one but they didn't work:
download MSVCP120.DLL online and add it to windows path and OpenCV bin file path
install Visual C++ Redistributable Packages for Visual Studio 2013 both x86 and x86
adjust Debug mode. Go to configuration > C/C++ > Code Generation > Runtime Library and select Multi-threaded Debug (/MTd)
Finally I solved this problem by reinstalling VS2015 with selecting all the options that can be installed, it takes a lot space but it really works.

I downloaded msvcr120d.dll and msvcp120d.dll for 32-bit version and then, I put them into Debug folder of my project. It worked well. (My computer is 64-bit version)

My problem was with x64 compilations deployed to a remote testing machine. I found the x64 versions of msvp120d.dll and msvcr120d.dll in
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\VC\redist\Debug_NonRedist\x64\Microsoft.VC120.DebugCRT

I had the same problem in Visual Studio Pro 2017: missing MSVCP120.dll file in Release mode and missing MSVCP120d.dll file in Debug mode.
I installed Visual C++ Redistributable Packages for Visual Studio 2013 and Update for Visual C++ 2013 and Visual C++ Redistributable Package as suggested here Microsoft answer this fixed the release mode.
For the debug mode what eventually worked was to copy msvcp120d.dll and msvcr120d.dll from a different computer (with Visual studio 2013) into C:\Windows\System32

Alternate approach : without installation of Redistributable package.
Check out in some github for the relevant dll, some people upload the reference dll for their application dependency.
you can download and use them in your project , I have used and run them successfully.
example : https://github.com/Emotiv/community-sdk/find/master

I was building my application on VS 2019 when this issue came up. You can copy these DLLs from this location into debug directory of your application to get going.

how to fix: error LNK1123: failure during conversion to COFF: file invalid or corrupt [duplicate]

I've installed Visual Studio 2012 Release Preview, and it appears to be fine, but now when I try to use Visual Studio 2010 to compile C++ projects, I get the following error message:
LINK : fatal error LNK1123: failure during conversion to COFF: file invalid or corrupt
I'm not 100% sure of this, but it seems to be related to projects that have .rc (resource) files in them.
I've tried repairing Visual Studio 2010 from Add/Remove programs and rebooting, but this has no effect.
I also get the same error if I use Visual Studio 2012 RC to compile the C++ projects when set to use the Visual Studio 2010 toolset. Upgrading to the Visual Studio 2011 toolset fixes the problem (but of course I don't want to do this for production code).
Update: I've uninstalled Visual Studio 2012, rebooted, and the problem still persists! Help!

This MSDN thread explains how to fix it.
To summarize:
Either disable incremental linking, by going to
Project Properties
-> Configuration Properties
-> Linker (General)
-> Enable Incremental Linking -> "No (/INCREMENTAL:NO)"
or install VS2010 SP1.
Edits (#CraigRinger): Note that installing VS 2010 SP1 will remove the 64-bit compilers. You need to install the VS 2010 SP1 compiler pack to get them back.
This affects Microsoft Windows SDK 7.1 for Windows 7 and .NET 4.0 as well as Visual Studio 2010.

If disabling incremental linking doesn't work for you, and turning off "Embed Manifest" doesn't work either, then search your path for multiple versions of CVTRES.exe.
By debugging with the /VERBOSE linker option I found the linker was writing that error message when it tried to invoke cvtres and it failed.
It turned out that I had two versions of this utility in my path. One at C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\BIN\cvtres.exe and one at C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\cvtres.exe. After VS2012 install, the VS2010 version of cvtres.exe will no longer work. If that's the first one in your path, and the linker decides it needs to convert a .res file to COFF object format, the link will fail with LNK1123.
(Really annoying that the error message has nothing to do with the actual problem, but that's not unusual for a Microsoft product.)
Just delete/rename the older version of the utility, or re-arrange your PATH variable, so that the version that works comes first.
Be aware that for x64 tooling builds you may also have to check C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\amd64 where there is another cvtres.exe.

Check the version of cvtrs.exe:
dir "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe"
Wrong version:
date: 03/18/2010
time: 01:16 PM
size: 31,048 bytes
name: cvtres.exe
Correct version:
date: 02/21/2011
time: 06:03 PM
size: 31,056 bytes
name: cvtres.exe
If you have wrong version you should copy the correct version from:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
and replace the one here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
i.e.
copy "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe"

According to this thread in MSDN forums: VS2012 RC installation breaks VS2010 C++ projects, simply, take cvtres.exe from VS2010 SP1
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
or from VS2012
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
and copy it over the cvtres.exe in VS2010 RTM installation (the one without SP1)
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
This way, you will effectively use the corrected version of cvtres.exe which is 11.0.51106.1.
Repeat the same steps for 64-bit version of the tool in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\amd64\cvtres.exe.
This solution is an alternative to installation of SP1 for VS2010 - in some cases you simply can't install SP1 (i.e. if you need to support pre-SP1 builds).

If you have installed Visual Studio 2012 RC, then it installed .NET 4.5 RC.
Uninstall .NET 4.5 RC, and install the version you need (4.0 for VS 2010). This should clear up any problems you are having.
This solved the same problem. There is no need to uninstall Visual Studio.

It's because of .NET Framework 4.5 is replacing .NET Framework 4.0.
I uninstalled Visual Studio 2010 several times with no luck. When I removed .NET Framework 4.5 and reinstalled Visual Studio 2010 it went fine.
See Uninstall Visual Studio 11 completely to do a fresh install.

For me, setting 'Generate Manifest' to 'No' fixed it. (Also fixed with /INCREMENTAL:NO)

If you're using x64, here's a resource will help:
This happens because Microsoft .NET 4.5 is incompatible with Visual C++ 10. The workaround is to ensure that you run the .NET version of cvtres.exe rather than the Visual C++ version. I did this by renaming the Visual C++ versions of those files and copying the .NET versions in their place.
1. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
2. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\amd64\cvtres.exe
1. C:\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\cvtres.exe
2. C:\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\cvtres.exe

I solved this problem eventually by doing a full uninstall of VS2012 RC, followed by a full uninstall of VS2010, then a reinstall from scratch of VS2010.
It took forever, but I'm now able to compile C++ projects in VS2010 again.

The issue was magically resolved for me by removing .NET 4.5, and replacing it with .NET 4.0. I then had to repair Visual Studio 2010 - it being corrupted along the way somehow.
I had previously installed, and then un-installed, Visual Studio 2012 - which may be related to the issue.

I have not installed Visual Studio 2012, but I still got this error in Visual Studio 2010. I got this resolved after installing Visual Studio 2010 SP1.

I had the same problem with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and it was solved by the method described in this youtube video
The video suggests to rename the file cvtres.exe in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin (in my Win7X64 matchine) to cvtres-old.exe

It didn't work for me after Enable Incremental Linking -> "No (/INCREMENTAL:NO)", but it works for me after I deleted the rc file.

+1 to user Short for an answer that worked for me!
I tried to do some debugging of this with msbuild /v:diag, and I'm seeing that MSBuild is trying to embed a manifest in the executable, with <somename>.dll.embed.manifest.res on the linker command line, where that is a resource file built from <somename>.dll.embed.manifest. But the manifest file is an empty Unicode text file. (That is, a two-byte file with the Unicode 0xFEFF prefix)
So the root problem seems to have something to do with that manifest file not being generated, or it being used when <somename>.dll.intermediate.manifest should have been used.
An alternate solution seems to be to turn off the "Embed Manifest" option under Properties, Manifest Tool, Input and Output.

To summarize:
Step1
Project Properties
-> Configuration Properties
-> Linker (General)
-> Enable Incremental Linking -> "No (/INCREMENTAL:NO)"
if step1 not work, do Step2
Project Properties
-> Configuration Properties
-> Manifest Tool (Input and Output)
-> Enable Incremental Linking -> "No"
if step2 not work, do Step3
Copy file one of:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio
11.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio
12.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio
13.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
Then, replace to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio
10.0\VC\bin\cvtres.exe
With me, do 3 step it work

As of January 2014, for some reasons I got installed .NET Framework 4.5.1, I don't know if due to a third party software installation or to an automatic update.
On January 29th, I got installed one component and I started receiving the
LINK : fatal error LNK1123: failure during conversion to COFF: file invalid or corrupt
message. At that time, I solved by avoiding the incremental link.
On Jan. 31st, I got installed another component of .NET Framework 4.5.1 and the incremental link trick did not work anymore. I then installed the Visual Studio 2010 SP1, but afterwards the problem became:
Error 6 error LNK1104: cannot open file 'msvcrtd.lib'.
I think the SP1 messed up my Visual Studio 2010 installation.
So I uninstalled .NET Framework 4.5.1, installed .NET Framework 4.0 and uninstalled and then reinstalled Visual Studio 2010. That worked for me.

Even inspite of installing Service pack you are getting the error then try removing/renaming the cvtres.exe in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin folder. This has worked for me.

I set Enable Incremental Linking to "No (/INCREMENTAL:NO)" and it doesn't work for me.
Next I've changed:
Project Properties
-> Configuration Properties
-> General
-> Platform Toolset -> "Visual Studio 2012 (v110)"
and it works for me :)

Reinstalling CMake worked for me. The new copy of CMake figured out that it should use Visual Studio 11 instead of 10.

I was using the Windows SDK for core Win32 programming and had .NET 4.5 installed for "unknown" reasons. I have uninstalled that and installed 4.0 like previous answers and yeah, it worked for me too.
Just am flabbergasted that I had to use the useless .NET framework for building Win32 apps using the SDK.

I solved this by doing the following:
In a command prompt, type msconfig and press enter.
Click services tab.
Look for "Application Experience" and put tick mark (that is, select this to enable).
Click OK. And restart if necessary.
Thus the problem will go forever. Do build randomly and debug your C++ projects without any disturbance.

For those of you looking for a solution for this problem with the OpenGL SuperBible 6th source code samples, the solution is building in Release instead of Debug. All projects have disabled the incremental linking option in the Release version.

My problem was that I've had two paths on my PC that contained the same libraries. Both paths were added to the Additional Library Directories in Configuration Properties -> Linker -> General. Removing one of the paths solved the problem.

I had the same problem after updating of .NET:
I uninstalled the .NET framework first,
downloaded visual studio from visualstudio.com and selected "repair".
NET framework were installed automatically with visual studio -> and now it works fine!

I tried a few times and finally solved the problem by uninstalling several times the VS2010. I think I hadn't uninstalled all the files and that's why it didn't work for the first time.
In the installation of VS2012, it is said that if you have VS2010 SP1 you can't work on the same project in both programs. It is recommended to have only one program.
Thanks!