VS2010: "Cannot find the resource compiler DLL. Please make sure the path is correct."

Question

I've been following theForger's win32 API tutorial, and I decided to open the menu_one.rc file to see its contents from within VS2010, and I got this error:

I've double-checked both locations and neither of the files actually exist. The only copies of rcdll.dll I have are located at:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin\rcdll.dll and 
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin\x64\rcdll.dll

I've tried doing a repair install of the Windows SDK, but that didn't fix the problem. What should I do?

Answer 1

This thread mentions a registry issue:

I had been able to reproduce the issue with my pc with Windows 7 SP1 64 bit and VS2010 Sp1 installed.

What I had to is modify the following registry entries from

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Windows]
"CurrentVersion"="7.0"
"CurrentInstallFolder"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft SDKs\\Windows\\v7.0\\"

to

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Windows]
"CurrentVersion"="7.0.30319"
"CurrentInstallFolder"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft SDKs\\Windows\\v7.0A\\"

And there were 2 keys under

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Windows]

which are

v7.0
v7.0A

I deleted v7.0 along with all its subkeys. And the problem is solved.

Answer 2

I was a little worried about changing the registry since I'm running on v8.0A, but I was able to fix the error by simply copying the rcdll.dll from previous version into the directory listed in the error message.