Visual Studio C++/CLI Mysterious Error With Template

Question

Well, I've been trying to make a C++ DLL in Visual Studio 2015, which took a while since I'm not very good with Visual Studio.

I need to access the .NET libraries, specifically System::Management. (Writing the code was a little harder than it needed to be due to a poor C++ implementation, but at least it has one.)

I fixed obvious errors and finally figured out I had to enable CLR in the project properties and then select the related libraries with References->Add Reference. But after all that, now it's just giving this weird error:

LNK1104: cannot open file 'MSCOREE.lib'

The compiler doesn't show red wavy lines below anything, and the error claims the line is "1" and the file is "LINK", so no help there.

I thought I probably messed up the project configuration somewhere, so I created a new project and moved the code over. The error still happened. If I turned off CLR and commented out the .NET-dependent code, the build succeeded without errors.

So I tried creating a new project from template (Visual C++ -> Win32 Console Application) and then enabling CLR before doing anything else. Then I tried again, selecting different versions of .NET framework.

Finally, I tried creating a project with template (Visual C++ -> CLR -> CLR Console Application) and building it immediately. I mean literally without doing ANYTHING ELSE. It still gave the same error!

LNK1104: cannot open file 'MSCOREE.lib'

What on earth is going on? Am I doing something wrong here, or is VS2015 just broken?

Answer 1

I had the same problem. Installing ".NET Framework 4.6.1 SDK" solved the problem. Pay attention to the version number, take it from your project configuration files

Answer 2

Check in Visual Studio installer 'C++/CLI support' for build tools of your needed version.

Answer 3

Try this, Right click the project that shows 'LNK1104: cannot open file 'MSCOREE.lib'', then select Properties --> Configuration Properties --> VC++ Directories --> Library Directories --> Add both entries from below separated by semi-colon

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1A\Lib
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1A\Lib\x64

This is where your 'mscoree.lib' should be, check if its there before doing this otherwise you might need to install/reinstall the Microsoft SDKs

Answer 4

In some situations the SDK may not install the required files in the LIB folder as described in MSCoree.lib missing from WinSDK. Their solution was to execute a repair of the install. That may not work.

I have successfully ran WinSDKInterop_amd64\WinSDKInterop_amd64.msi resulting in the creation of:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Lib\IA64\mscoree.lib
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Lib\mscoree.lib
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Lib\x64\mscoree.lib