QuickStart project won't compile

Development Getting Started & Setup
, , ,
1

Hello. New Unreal user here (coming from Unity).
Since yesterday I’ve been trying to follow the quick start project (new C++ Basic Code) but I’m getting all sorts of errors. I want to mention that before posting this question I did research on the matter, helping me to get past some of the errors. But now I’m completely stuck.
STEPS:
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/GettingStarted/Installation/index.html:

  • I installed MSVS 2017 Community, checked Game dev containing Unreal. At custom components I checked (among others) C++ as well.
  • I installed Unreal Engine 4.17.2 via Epic Launcher.
  • I installed Windows SDK v10 and SDK v8.1 (downloaded separately from MSVS).

The current error is:

The project could not be compiled.
Would you like to open it in Visual
Studio?
[…]
ERROR: No 32-bit
compiler toolchain found in C:\Program
Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio
14.0\VC\bin\cl.exe
Upon pressing “open with Visual Studio” another message pops up:
Could not edit the code editing IDE.
[…]\MyProject.sln could not be found.
The engine closes.

Now if I restart the engine, MyProject is in the list of projects.
I press open and this shows up:

The following modules are missing or
built with a different engine version:
EU4Editor-MyProject.dll Would you
like to rebuild them now?
I press yes.
Starting build…
After a while:
MyProject could not be compiled. Try rebuilding from source manually.
I press OK.
Engine closes.
I want to mention that I’m able to create and code into a new desktop C++ project in MSVS 2017, totally unrelated to Unreal.

EDIT:
Somebody noticed the error was about VS v14 whereas I have VS 2017 installed. Indeed, I had VS 2015 installed already but why doesn’t Unreal Engine choose 2017 over 2015? First engine launch was after installing VS 2017.
Anyway, I uninstalled both VS and all MS related stuff. I manually deleted the installation folders Visual Studio 11, ...12 through 15 cause the uninstallation apparently skipped some steps.
Then I installed a fresh 2017 version (albeit Windows 10 SDK UWP wouldn’t install).
Unreal Engine still bound to v14. I changed editor settings > code source from Visual Studio to Visual Studio 2017 but absolutely nothing changed.

2

I solved it by monitoring UE4Editor.exe. It accessed some data in Windows registry about VS 2015. When I deleted the leftovers of VS 2015 I couldn’t see some entries in the registry as they were not that obviously related to VS 2015 (or v14). Now tracing the keys/values accessed by Unreal I discovered the culprit. Basically if you think you’ve removed VS 2015 by running the uninstaller, think again - you have to make sure to also:

  • manually delete folders like Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12, Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14;
  • delete from registry all related contents like “visual studio 14”, “visual studio 2015”;
  • make sure these 2 are not present in registry:
  1. HKLU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0 (whole key)
  2. 14.0 in HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\SxS\VS7 Only 14.0 not the entire key!!

Or you may use TotalUninstaller - not that one for any programs - but the one on github especially for Visual Studio. In this case you’ll have to repair VS 2017 as it also removes stuff pertaining to VS 2017.