“Unspecified error” in Visual Studio 2008 when trying to view project properties

Question

When I set my active solution from Win32 to x64, I cannot build the project or view the properties.

When I try to build my project, it is skipped.

When I try

Answer 1

The x64 components for Visual Studio 2008 had not been installed on the second computer. Installing those solved the problem.

(There are a lot of unhelpful hits in Google when searching for a solution to this problem. Hopefully this helps someone else in the future.)

Answer 2

I had the same issue with Visual Studio 2005. I fixed it by running Visual Studio install/repair and selecting the 64 bit components under the C++ install options.

Answer 3

VS 2008 Pro doesn't install the 64-bit compiler and tools by default. You have to explicitly select them during the installation.

Control Panel -> Uninstall Programs. Select Visual Studio and click Uninstall/Change. Wait. Wait some more. Click Next. Choose Add or Remove Features. Expand MSVC 2008 -> Language Tools -> Visual C++. Select X64 Compilers and Tools. You'll probably need your original installation media.

Once the 64-bit compiler and tools are installed, you should be able to add a 64-bit configuration to your solution

Answer 4

Even if Visual studio 2008 64 bit is not installed in windows 7 machine, User can select compatibility mode to windows xp using property option and can continue to run visual studio using "Run as administrator" option to avoide this error.

Answer 5

In my case removing TargetFrameworkVersion attribute from VisualStudioProject xml node of vcproj file solved the problem. I suspect it was caused by project file conversion from previous version of Visual Studio.