Error accessing VC80.idb during compilation of VC++ project

If you’re getting the following error

Could not delete file ‘c:projectobjreleasevc80.idb
Make sure that the file is not open by another process and is not write-protected.

while building large VS solution with many VC++ projects, in a random and inconsitent manner, most likely you have just hit another Visual Studio bug. VS, by default, attempts to build multiple projects concurrently on system with multiple processors, which may cause the above error if different projects share the same IDB (VC++ Minimum Rebuild Dependency) file.

There are several solutions for this, but the simplest one would be to tell VS not to build multiple projects concurrently. To do this, open Tools>Options>Projects and Solutions>Build and Run, and set the value of Maximum number of parallel project builds to 1. However, with this method, your solution will take longer to build.