Why is Visual Studio C++ 2008 Express Broken OOTB?

[Ceran]

Hi,

I just installed VC++ 2008 Express on WinXP, tried to compile a simple "hello world" program, and got this error from cl.exe:

NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"path\cl.exe"' : return code '0xc0000135'

Google shows *a lot* of people have received this error. Unfortunately, of the three fixes I've found, none work:

1) Nmake can't find cl.exe
Not sure why so many people suggested this. Nmake can obviously find cl.exe since it's cl.exe that's returning the 135 error code.

2) Cl.exe can't find ms*.dll, so you have to copy these dlls into VC++'s /bin folder
I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't know where to put it's own DLLs, but this actually fixed the 135 error. However, it caused another error "Invalid database manager, return code 0x2", and I haven't found a fix for this one.

3) Your install's broken so reinstall.
Again, not sure how/why MS's installer would have created a broken install without so much as an error message, and I don't understand why anyone would think simply re-running the faulty installer would magically fix the problem. Of course, I tried both the uninstall/reinstall and repair options, and of course neither worked.

Does anyone have any experience with this error message, and how to fix it?

Regards,
Chris

 

[cpjust]

I haven't had any problems with VC++ 2008 express.

Are you compiling with NMAKE or using the GUI?
I always use the GUI.

 

[LF28]

HI there,

I was experiencing similar problems when I installed VS8 on my machine at work for the first time. I noticed two things that might be helpful with this:

1. If you already have a "express" version of the MS build tools installed, uninstall it first.

2. Don't mess with the install options, just keep them as they are. I usually go through every option available and only install those which I think I need. But in case of VS8 it is IMHO better to just install everything.

After this, it worked for me.

 

[xwb]

You need to run vcvars32 from the bin directory first. Then it will see everything.