Add Command prompt in VS 2008 Express Edition manu

Question

To add the Command prompt in VS 2008 Express Edition, I have done the following steps: Tools->External Tools->Click on Add. Then I have entered the following information:

Title: Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt
Command: cmd.exe
Arguments: %comspec% /k ""C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat"" x86
Initial Directory: $(ProjectDir)

Then OK/Apply.

After this when I went to the Tools Menu and clicked on Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt, command prompt opened but I got the following error message:

'"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat"' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

Please somebody help me to fix this problem. Or somebody teach me freshly how to add command prompt to the Tools Menu manually in VS 2008 Express Edition.

Answer 1

Add Command prompt in VS 2010 ultimate manually- http://bit.ly/1L2tseJ

Answer 2

Why are you specifying the %comspec% environment variable as part of the arguments to cmd.exe? Doesn't %comspec% point to cmd.exe?

I'm also not sure why you added x86 to the end of the arguments, as well.

It seems like it would be enough for the arguments to be /k "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat"

Finally, I'm not at a Windows machine currently, but have you double checked the path to the .bat file? At least for the non-free versions of Visual Studio, I seem to recall the .bat file being something like vsvars.bat or vcvars32.bat. The name could be different for the Express Edition, though.