Visual Studio 2005 missing Msi.lib

Visual Studio 2005 only installs msi.lib for the AMD-64 platform. Installing the latest Platform SDK, PSDK will install it for x86, IA-64 and AMD-64. As of this post, Microsoft Platform SDK for Windows Server 2003 R2 was the most recent version. That page should say whether or not there is a more recent version.

Once it is installed, you have to tell Visual Studio where to find the PSDK files. The file path settings are part of the Visual Studio options which are accessed from the ToolsOptions... menu item.

Under Projects and Solutions, select VC++ Directories. Then, pick each item under Show directories for looking for paths have PlatformSDK in them. Insert an entry just before it that refers to the same subdirectory under $(ProgramFiles)\Microsoft Platform SDK for Windows Server 2003 R2.



The up- and down-arrow buttons may be used to move the new entry to the right place in the list.

Now, Rebuild any solution that needs the msi.lib library.