The BuildConfiguration file I had in location e (what I deleted) says this:
There are four possible location for this file:
a. UE4/Engine/Programs/UnrealBuildTool
b. UE4/Engine/Programs/NotForLicensees/UnrealBuildTool
c. UE4/Engine/Saved/UnrealBuildTool
d. AppData/Roaming/Unreal Engine/UnrealBuildTool
e. My Documents/Unreal Engine/UnrealBuildTool
UBT looks in each location in the order above, overriding previously read settings with data from subsequent files (hence e. has the highest priority).
The next one in priority that I had was at location d, which is working for me. It says what I pasted into this google doc
If the one that’s getting automatically generated has something wrong with it, perhaps copying this into location e might work? I’m still very new to Unreal and C++ so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to help if this guess doesn’t work.
I saw the files we had were not exactly the same so I pasted yours in to see if would work for me. Unfortunately it did not work. You can use the ctrl-scroll zoom tool to 300% to see the message pretty clearly.
The other thing I did was I installed the Windows 8.1 SDKseparately from Visual studio like some of the others mentioned, as I got both the 8.1 and 10 SDK and the ws2_32.lib file seemed to only have been in the folder for 10. After installing it separate from VS I had the 8.1 version. It may have been a combination of that and the build configuration for me. For some reason though, my installation of 4.14 and 4.15 both worked fine despite this, so I’m kinda doubting that that was the problem. If this doesn’t work, I don’t think i can help.
Edit: Actually, reading my post again, it looked like I had the ws2_32.lib problems with 4.15 after reinstalling Visual Studio, and installing 8.1 SDK fixed it for 4.15 (still having some of the other errors you mentioned), and the BuildConfiguration file fixed the rest of the erros I had with compiling, so this may work.
I am finally satisfied I have crushed this bug. I don’t know what was wrong with the thing. But after using the ‘reset this pc’ tool to totally reinstall windows 10, eliminating all my apps, then reinstall Unreal Engine 4, then directly reinstall VS2017 through the Project Creation Browser (which automatically selects all necessary components), I subsequently was able to get C++ projects to load some 10 times in a row with no problems and access C++ files through VS2017 in BP projects over and over again with no problems either. So I am pretty confident this bug has been crushed now.
Unfortunately I have no clue what was blocking the process, but it is gone now. Its a bit troublesome because it never should have been there in the first place. Something to think about.
