How do I solved Linker errors that go "Unresolved external symbol..."

Question

I am trying to download and build the 'WIC Image Viewer usign Direct2D' from here, but when I build my solution, I am slapped with 56 errors that look like:

• Error 1 error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol _imp_CoUninitialize@0 referenced in function _wWinMain@16 WICViewerD2D.obj
• Error 2 error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol _imp_DispatchMessageW@4 referenced in function _wWinMain@16 WICViewerD2D.obj
• Error 3 error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol _imp_TranslateMessage@4 referenced in function _wWinMain@16 WICViewerD2D.obj

and so on. Surely this is something in my Visual Studio settings, because isn't this code supposed to work out of the box? I have Windows SDK v7.0 installed.

Answer 1

It could most likely mean that your directory settings in the Visual Studio project aren't correctly set. For VS2008, go to Tools-->Options-->Projects and Solutions-->VC++ Directories and set the appropriate include file path and library file path.

Make sure you referenced the correct library files by stating their names in Project-->Properties-->Linker-->Input-->"Additional Dependencies".