MSBuild does not contain a value for the “VCTargetsPath” property

Question

I recently installed the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview to try it out, and now my VS 2010 projects won\'t open. Instead, I get the following error message:

Answer 1

I arrived here when trying to build a c++ project without the c++ Visual Studio build tools installed. My solution was to download the Visual Studio Build Tools installer from the downloads page under 'Tools for Visual Studio 2017' tab, running the installer with the"Visual C++ build tools" and ".NET Desktop Build Tools" options.