I thought I could get away with installing .Net 4.5 without VS2012 or any of the SDK’s so that I could get a manual copy of code analysis working on our build server.
I was very wrong.
The very act of installing .Net 4.5 threw a number of errors to my previously working builds.
C:WindowsMicrosoft.NETFramework64v4.0.30319Microsoft.Common.targets(2836,5): error MSB3086: Task could not find “AL.exe” using the SdkToolsPath “” or the registry key “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftMicrosoft SDKsWindowsv8.0AWinSDK-NetFx40Tools-x86”. Make sure the SdkToolsPath is set and the tool exists in the correct processor specific location under the SdkToolsPath and that the Microsoft Windows SDK is installed [C:x.csproj]
and
C:x2.csproj(178,3): error MSB4019: The imported project “C:Program Files (x86)MSBuildMicrosoftVisualStudiov11.0WebApplicationsMicrosoft.WebApplication.targets” was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.
What I did find is if i browsed to the registry key:
ComputerHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftMSBuildToolsVersion4.0
And renamed the key ‘11.0’ to ‘11.0-DoNotUseYet’. it seemed to revert back to windows SDK 7.0.
The worst part is it is running Windows Server 2008 which means I can’t install the 8.0 SDK anyway.
I ran into exactly the same error now with al.exe. My build server is Windows Server 2008 R2 and I could not install Windows SDK v8.0a on it. My target framework version 4.5. What is the proper action to take?
I am unsure of Microsoft’s official reply other than upgrade your windows server. Perhaps logging a https://connect.microsoft.com/ will yield a better action.
Until then, I recommend you do the workaround I suggested above (Renaming registry key) to keep things ticking over.
We solved the issue by upgrading our server to windows 2012, but I realize that may not always be an option.