Strange Error Message, help please

[phiefer3]

Ok, First of all, I'm using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, and I've been getting this problem when making c++ projects starting from an empty project. I haven't tried other project types yet, so I don't know if this is affecting them as well.

Anyways, this problem is not isolated to any individual program, it seems to just happen to all of them, some of the time. This is the error message I've been getting, it pops up after the "Embedding manifest..." line in the build log:

mt.exe: general error c101008d: Failed to write updated manifest to the resource of file "...". Access is denied.

Where that "..." in there is the path and name where the executable is placed after building.

Again, this seems to be a widespread problem as I've created a new project, and written nothing other than the following code, and I still get this error:

int main()
{
   return 0;
}

That's the entire source code file. So it's not a problem with my code. The error doesn't always happen, if I sit there and keep hitting Build it eventually works, but it's extremely annoying and frustrating.

This all started about 2 weeks ago, after 2+ years of using VS2005 without any such problems.

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

[weaknessforcats]

Something has changed in your development environment. By any chance has the project been moved from the local disc to a network disc?

[manontheedge]

Not sure if this is the same problem, but I was having a problem with VS2008 where it gave me some error about not being able to update ....

anyway, try under "Build", click on "Clean Solution" ... that might help.

[weaknessforcats]

The "not able to update" usually means the program execution window is still open from your last test.

[phiefer3]

The execution window is definitely not open, a lot of the times that it's happened was when I just wanted to build my current code to make sure there aren't any compile/linker errors and I don't run it at all and I still get the error (it also happens on the first build of the program when there wasn't even a previous execution window). And the project has not been moved at all since creation. When the problem kept starting up, I created a new empty project added a source file and typed in that empty program and it still does it.

The only real change I can think of for is for one of my classes I had to install VMWare Workstation, and during the install it installed a tool for VS2005 (along with a menu item, and a toolbar). But when I thought of that I uninstalled VMWare Workstation and the tool/menu/toolbar went with it, but the problem still persists.

Would it be relatively safe for me to assume that if I uninstall VS2005 and then reinstall it that the problem should go away? Such as if VMWare screwed something up that wasn't fixed by removing that?

[weaknessforcats]

That probably is your culprit. I used VS2005 for years and never had this problem. But then, VS2005 was all I ever installed.

The unable to update manifest usually means there is a library version problem.

Yes, I would re-install VS2005 and see if that clears the error.

Please post what happened.

[phiefer3]

Well, I'm supposed to be getting some upgrades on my computer in the next week or two (new hard drive, more ram, and a new processor), so I'll probably just let it be for now since I'll have to install it on the new hard drive anyways.