FIX: Profiling May Fail If Install Dir Contains Long File Name (141670)

The information in this article is included in the documentation starting with Visual C++ 5.0. Look there for future revisions.

SYMPTOMS

If you have installed Visual C++ in a directory that has a long file name like this one:

   C:\Microsoft Program Files\Development Platforms

you will get the following error message when you attempt to profile a project:

VcSpawn is a utility program required by Visual C++ Development
Environment.
prep failed.

NOTE: This problem only occurs if the long file name contains spaces.

RESOLUTION

To work around the problem, you can run the profiling tools from the command line rather than through Developer Studio. Start a command prompt, and run the Vcvars32.bat file in the Bin subdirectory of your Visual C++ installation. This will ensure that the profiling tools directory is included in your PATH environment variable. Now you can run one of the standard profiling batch files, such as Fcount.bat, to profile your project. For more information on the standard batch files, refer to Profiler Reference in the online documentation.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a bug in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. This bug was corrected in Visual C++ 4.1.