Error 'LINK : fatal error LNK1123: failure during conversion to COFF: file invalid or corrupt' after installing Visual Studio 2012 Release Preview

Question

I've installed Visual Studio 2012 Release Preview, and it appears to be fine, but now when I try to use Visual Studio 2010 to compile C++ projects, I get the following error message:

LINK : fatal error LNK1123: failure during conversion to COFF: file invalid or corrupt

I'm not 100% sure of this, but it seems to be related to projects that have .rc (resource) files in them.

I've tried repairing Visual Studio 2010 from Add/Remove programs and rebooting, but this has no effect.

I also get the same error if I use Visual Studio 2012 RC to compile the C++ projects when set to use the Visual Studio 2010 toolset. Upgrading to the Visual Studio 2011 toolset fixes the problem (but of course I don't want to do this for production code).

Update: I've uninstalled Visual Studio 2012, rebooted, and the problem still persists! Help!

Answer 1

This MSDN thread explains how to fix it.

To summarize:

• Either disable incremental linking, by going to

  Project Properties 
     -> Configuration Properties 
         -> Linker (General) 
            -> Enable Incremental Linking -> "No (/INCREMENTAL:NO)"
  

• or install VS2010 SP1.

Edits (@CraigRinger): Note that installing VS 2010 SP1 will remove the 64-bit compilers. You need to install the VS 2010 SP1 compiler pack to get them back.

This affects Microsoft Windows SDK 7.1 for Windows 7 and .NET 4.0 as well as Visual Studio 2010.