Why do I get an error for “__CrtGetFileInformationByHandleEx ” when I try to compile

Question

I just installed Visual Studio 2015 Community on my computer. Until now I have been using Visual Studio 2010 Professional. Now when I try to run my MVC apps in the build i

Answer 1

Okay, I see it from the files you uploaded to the sharing service, your .NET install is corrupted. A standard DLL Hell problem, your c:\windows\syswow64\msvcr120_clr400.dll file is the wrong version. Something you can see when you use Explorer and navigate to the file. Right-click and select Properties, look at the Details tab.

Note the word "CTP" in the Product name, means "Community Technology Preview". A Microsoft term that means "beta version". Clearly you should not be having the VS2013 beta on your machine. Your msvcp120_clr0400.dll is correct, it is file version 12.0.52512.0. It depends on an exported function in the msvcr DLL that the CTP version did not yet have.

Exactly how this happened is always hard to reverse-engineer. You are the 3rd SO user that I know of that had this problem this week, a bit too much of a coincidence. Two basic scenarios, if you ever had the VS2013 CTP edition installed on the machine then the problem is that it didn't get updated like it should have. Otherwise a very typical problem with CTP editions, they are pretty dangerous because the uninstaller is always the last thing Microsoft gets right. And the problem was just never detected until you started using a program that required this export.

Or it was caused by a rogue installer, copying the old version onto your machine without checking the version number. Much less likely, installers never have a good reason to install this particular file since it is only ever used by the .NET Framework. My money is therefore on your machine getting corrupted by the CTP.

You need to solve this by getting your machine fixed. Not that easy, you can never be sure how many other bad DLLs are lying around from such a bad CTP uninstall. A shortcut is copying this particular DLL from a good machine. But best to get .NET 4.6 re-installed.

EDIT from OP:

This answer correctly identified the problem files but reinstalling (or any other common steps) didn't solve it. In the end I copied "good" files from another computer with the version number 12.0.20806.33440.