The builds tools for v120 (Platform Toolset = 'v120') cannot be found

Question

Using visual studio 2012 on windows 8 x64 aparantly this is caused by msbuild being moved into .net but I havn't seen how to fix it yet.

4>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V110\Microsoft.Cpp.Platform.targets(44,5): error MSB8020: The builds tools for v120 (Platform Toolset = 'v120') cannot be found. To build using the v120 build tools, either click the Project menu or right-click the solution, and then select "Update VC++ Projects...". Install v120 to build using the v120 build tools.     2>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V110\Microsoft.Cpp.Platform.targets(44,5): error MSB8020: The builds tools for v120 (Platform Toolset = 'v120') cannot be found. To build using the v120 build tools, either click the Project menu or right-click the solution, and then select "Update VC++ Projects...". Install v120 to build using the v120 build tools.     5>C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\V110\Microsoft.Cpp.Platform.targets(44,5): error MSB8020: The builds tools for v120 (Platform Toolset = 'v120') cannot be found. To build using the v120 build tools, either click the Project menu or right-click the solution, and then select "Update VC++ Projects...". Install v120 to build using the v120 build tools. 

Answer 1

If you have VS2013 installed and are getting this error, you may be invoking the wrong MSBuild. With VS2013, Microsoft now includes MSBuild as part of Visual Studio. See this Visual Studio blog posting for details.

In particular, note the new location of the binaries:

On 32-bit machines they can be found in: C:\Program Files\MSBuild\12.0\bin

On 64-bit machines the 32-bit tools will be under: C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\12.0\bin

and the 64-bit tools under: C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\12.0\bin\amd64

The MSBuild in %WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\ doesn't seem to recognize the VS2013 (v120) platform toolset.

Answer 2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_C++

You are using Visual C++ 2012 which is v110. v120 means Visual C++ 2013.

So either you change the project settings to use toolset v110, or you install Visual Studio 2013 on this machine and use VS2013 to compile it.