microsoft visual studio 2008 builds keep failing

Question

My builds keep failing with the following error

Project : error PRJ0002 : Error result 31 returned from 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\mt.exe'.  

I find that i have to kill some process called mspdbsrv.exe description:"microsoft program database" Then rebuild the entire project. This is annoying. Is there a permanent solution to this problem or is it stuck with me for good?

PS OS: windows 7 ultimate

msv studio 2008 + sp1 professional

Answer 1

The problem is that for some reason, your mspdbsrv.exe is staying alive after the build. This is what's used to generate your .pdb files as part of the build. The only reliable solution seems to be to kill that process.

What you can do is at least automate that, just add a post-build event and console kill it. I'd suggest using the SysInternals PSKill utility (free) like this in your post-build:

pskill mspdbsrv.exe