Schrievkrom

By

schrievkrom

·

ERROR: Cannot determine the location of the VS Common Tools folder.

When you get this error … something got really broken. I do not know the reason how I got this error – but actually an installation of some development tools are the reason for this …. Microsoft looks for the location of its tools by looking at the env variable “VS100COMNTOOLS”. In my case this…

When you get this error … something got really broken. I do not know the reason how I got this error – but actually an installation of some development tools are the reason for this ….

Microsoft looks for the location of its tools by looking at the env variable “VS100COMNTOOLS”. In my case this env variable is set, BUT starting a VS2010 command shell fails to set this variable – because the Microsoft script unset the variable first and then query the registry for the installation path and set it again.

To query the registry it uses the command “reg” and “reg” is located in c:\windows\system32. But this directory is NOT defined in the PATH variable content any more and therefore reg is not found.

The not finding of “reg” creates an error and VS100COMNTOOLS remains unset and the whole stuff is not working any more.

Therefore the missing of “c:\windows\system32” in PATH is the reason for all these errors – but I still do not know, which tool installation broke that stuff.

Tags:

Responses to “ERROR: Cannot determine the location of the VS Common Tools folder.”

  1. Amit Jain

    Hi,
    I was getting same problem.
    But after reaching to your post. I have resolved the issue.

    Thank you very much. 🙂

    Reply
  2. Christopher Cook

    I had the same error – the only item I had in my path was to quick time!

    Reply
  3. Jack

    THANK YOU! I HAD EXACTLY THE SAME PROBLEM AND YOUR POST SAVED ME! THANK YOU A MILLION TIMES!

    Reply
  4. Dmitri

    Does anyone know why this happens?

    Reply
  5. vishal

    setting path variable to c:\system\windows\system32 solves the issue …..

    thanks yaar

    Reply
  6. Milind Kolekar

    Thanks – You just saved a few hair on my head.

    Reply
  7. Justin

    Thank you so much, this just resolved a whole bunch of problems I was having

    Reply
  8. Derek Warren

    Can someone share where this path should be updated? I tried adding it to vcvarsall.bat, on line 170, like so:

    @set PATH=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\BIN;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools;C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5;C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\VCPackages;C:\windows\system32;%PATH

    But to no avail. Same issue continues.

    Thanks in advance for any ideas/direction.

    Reply
  9. C0

    I got the same error today. The cause is that I uninstalled the preview VS2011, apparently the uninstaller messed things.

    I fixed it by adding values manually under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\SxS in registry on a Win64:
    FrameworkDir32 = D:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\
    FrameworkDir64 = D:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64
    FrameworkVer32 = v4.0.30319
    FrameworkVer64 = v4.0.30319

    Reply
  10. Robert

    I got this also, when trying to use the compiler suite that comes with the 7.1 SDK. And I don’t have the path issue 😦

    Reply
  11. LL2

    Man, i just wish Microsoft could get their crap togeather!

    Reply
  12. Ashok Thakur

    hi,
    i was getting the same problem. But after reading your post, my problem is resolved…
    Thank you very much 😉

    Reply
  13. Josh

    Fixed it for me too, thank you!

    Reply
  14. Rogério Santos

    I got this error after installing (install other stuff) Windows Live Movie Maker (Windows Live Tools). May be windows installer got without buffer space to copy previous PATH string and so lost the last folder that was set. If this is true, the install any other windows software that change the PATH var, may broke it again.

    Reply
  15. sasi

    Thanks a lot

    Reply
  16. bob

    This is a great post! Thank you!

    Reply
  17. JJACK

    This worked for me ! Thank you so much!

    Reply
  18. arihant

    hi , i am in the process of building a wireshark dissector.i am not able to use “nmake” which shows the error (as d name of your article).i’ve put c:/windows/system32 against path env var.should i add VS100COMNTOOLS as an env var and assign the address?plzz help…

    Reply
  19. All

    Your tip was great.
    In prompt: path=path;c:\windows\system32 and then “voilà”.
    Thanks

    Reply
  20. the_nuke

    thanks a ton …!!!

    Reply
  21. Nikhil Mehta

    Had the same problem. Thanks a lot.

    Reply
  22. Rhys

    I’ve just installed python(x,y) and found that it was responsible for altering the PATH variable that caused this problem on my Win 7 64-bit machine.

    Reply
  23. Lawrence

    Thanks a lot…that was a simple fix!!!

    Reply
  24. Tyrant917@yahoo.com

    Saved my butt. Thanks.

    Reply
  25. noname

    You saved my day. Happy New Year !

    Reply
  26. ST

    Finally this really worked.
    My cl compiler was running fine until I set up the environment for adt bundle SDK eclipse. Then, I spent so much time searching for solution but none fully helped.

    Thank You Very Much

    Reply
  27. Anup kumar

    thanks dude .. I had also facing same problem ..

    Reply
  28. PenelopeLin

    it works for me,thanks alot!

    Reply
  29. Suraj Khurana

    Solved! thanks !

    Reply
    1. wonde

      many thanks, things are good now.

      Reply
  30. Thomas

    Also solved my problem. Couldn’t get qt creator to compile. The error running vcvarsall.bat x86_amd64 that qt runs did not show in qt creator (somehow suppressed).

    Reply
  31. chris leong

    Help, I still couldnt get my vsvar32.bat to work. Ive already added that value into my path env var but it still can’t find the folder!

    Reply
  32. ringerc

    With VS 2013 community update 5 this can be an issue where for some insane reason it installs the VS 2012 command prompt entries instead. These obviously won’t work since VS 2012 isn’t installed. See the 2nd-last post on:

    https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/78703f6b-f610-456c-b770-76a12be3e1ae/error-cannot-determine-the-location-of-the-vs-common-tools-folder?forum=vssetup

    You have to edit the shortcuts. Rename them from VS 2012 to VS 2013, and change the vcvars paths from ’11’ to ’12’.

    Reply
  33. tai

    thank you so much

    Reply
  34. sdev

    iam gettinng same error i did same like above i add “c:\windows\system32” but again iam getting
    same error this is my path=C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\130\Tools\Binn\;C:\Windows\System32;

    Reply
  35. VS2010 command prompt gives error: Cannot determine the location of the VS Common Tools folder – PhotoLens

    […] I had the same issue and found the answer here. […]

    Reply
  36. VS2010 command prompt gives error: Cannot determine the location of the VS Common Tools folder – Row Coding

    […] I had the same issue and found the answer here. […]

    Reply

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.