error PRJ0019: A tool returned an error code from

Visual studio is giving the error PRJ0019: A tool returned an error code from "Copying DLL...". The console window includes the output: 'CopyDLL.cmd' is not recognized as an internal or external command. Here is some background as to why I don't know about the tool which is copying. Someone left the company a year ago and forgot to check in their latest version of code for a MS Visual Studio 2008 project using C# and C+_. Now we need to fix the program, but can't find the code and I've been assigned with trying to clean the mess up.

 Answers

	You should check the Custom Build Step (Project Properties->Configuration Properties->Custom Build Step) for all of the projects and all of the files. It may be easier to open the *.vcproj files in a text editor and check the tags under individual files in the project. Look for any tags that have a non-empty CommandLine attribute.

	Turn up the build output with Tools -> Options -> Projects and Solutions -> Build and Run Set MSBuild project build output verbosity to something higher than the default. I'd step it up one level at a time because the highest level is pathologically verbose.

	Go to Tools->Options->Directories and add this… C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE That should do the trick...

I'd never noticed before, but every time you do a build, there's a line printed to the Output window that says: Build log was saved at "file://... CTRL-clicking on that link will give a lot more detail about the build that failed. In my case, I found 3 "copy" commands, with the wrong filename, which pointed me to the CommandLine attribute in the vsproj file, as suggested by Andrew Garrison.