VC2013 is invalid MSPDB120.DLL

Question

During the link, I get this message:

LINK : fatal error LNK1101: incorrect MSPDB120.DLL version; recheck installation of this product

I saw solutions for similar errors in previous versions of VC2013, but for me this did not work. These include:

• running C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\VC\bin\vcvars32.bat
• adding the environment variable% VS120COMNTOOLS% to the PATH environment variable
• Reinstall or restore the MSVC2013 installation (NOT RECOMMENDED)

The first time I got this error, I went on to completely reinstall VC2013. I chose this route because I thought that maybe I screwed up the installation by installing older versions of VC after installing VC2013. Although the reinstallation worked for the first time, I cannot recommend it. The MS installer seems rather broken and put multiple attempts on me, which led to the loss of 5 hours in my life.

What are some other solutions to this problem if the first 2 options do not work?

Answer 1

Open task manager.

Check the currently running mspdbsrv.exe processes and kill it if it is running, and try again. I don't know why this works, but I have to do this from time to time. The process returns every time it is compiled, and it seems random if it will get stuck at this step.

Alternatively, if you do not need the generated debugging information, you can skip this process as a whole by setting:

• Project Properties → Connector → Debugging → Generating Debug Information → No

Answer 2

I just happened. In my case, I had a statically linked general "helper" lib that was compiled with the CRT cl.exe flags "-D_CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE -D_CRT_NONSTDC_NO_DEPRECATE", while my target application bundled in this helper lib did not have these sets. As soon as I added these flags to the app cl.exe flags, everything was fine.

Answer 3

I get this error message when another compiler (jenkins) is still running in the background. Waiting for completion and retrying to fix the error.