Compilation fails randomly: “cannot open program database”

Question

During a long compilation with Visual Studio 2005 (version 8.0.50727.762), I sometimes get the following error in several files in some project:

fatal erro         


        

Answer 1

I had a similar problem while working on a project which I had located in my Dropbox folder. I found that it would throw this error when the little "syncing" icon was going on the Dropbox icon in the system tray, since Dropbox was accessing the files to upload them to their server. When I waited to build until Dropbox finished syncing, it worked every time.

Answer 2

This generally happens when your previous attempts at debugging have not killed the debugger fully. In Task manager look for a process called vcjit, kill it and try again. Worst option restart visual studio, this should solve your problem.

Answer 3

I had this problem today and it turned out to be non-ansi characters in the path to the pdb that caused it.

I'm using windows through vmware, and my project was in a shared location: \vmware-host\Shared Folders\project

When I moved it to \Users\julian\project it resolved the issue.

Answer 4

I just ran into this problem. Visual studio was complaining about not being able to open vc100.pdb. I looked for open file handles to this file using procexp and found out that the process mspdbsrv had an open file handle to it. Killing this process fixed the issue and I was able to compile.

Answer 5

Switch the debug info to C7 format instead of using the PDB.

Project Options -> C/C++ -> General -> Debug Information Format and set it to C7.

Answer 6

I have same problem C1033: cannot open program database,

Scenario

I have two dll's parent.dll and child.dll.I just attached child.dll project with visual studio debugger at the same time i am trying to build the parent.dll project,produces error C1033: cannot open program database

Solution

Stop debugging and kill the process attached with the debugger.Rebuild the project