I’ve had this issue with all recent engine versions starting from at least 4.12.
It happened to me a few times that when trying to start the editor from Visual Studio, UE4Editor.exe would be missing. At first, I thought some antimalware software or Windows Defender was deleting the file, although none reported it. I finally noticed a pattern: it happened after I had switched the game project from using the engine built from source, to a precompiled engine installed via the launcher. It only happens when you don’t delete your Intermediate folder first.
Repro steps:
- Have an engine built from source, a precompiled engine and a game project ready
- Right click the game’s .uproject > Switch Unreal Engine version > select the engine from source
- Open the game’s Visual Studio solution, build and run the game
- Close Visual Studio
- Right click the game’s .uproject > Switch Unreal Engine version > select the precompiled engine
- Open the game’s Visual Studio solution, build and run the game
- On two of my machines, at this point UE4Editor.exe is missing from the precompiled engine folder
This issue only happens when I don’t delete the Intermediate folder in the game project root folder. It leads me to believe that after changing engine versions, left-over Intermediate files cause Visual Studio to incorrectly delete UE4Editor.exe at the new location.