Hello,

I apologize if this is not the appropriate place to post this, I wasn't sure where else it would go. I recently began an Intro to C++ course in which we use Visual C++ Professional 6.0. My problem is this:

Whenever I try to do a build, and sometimes a compile, Visual C++ simply sits there and says "Linking" forever. Though it does this on anything I try to do a build for, right now I'm just trying to execute a simple "Hello world" program (ie, less than 10 lines of very simple code). The "stop build" button does not work, and the only way to re-activate the build/compile/execute buttons is to CTRL-ALT-DEL out of Visual C++ and restart it. Visual C++ doesn't actually freeze - all the other functions of the program seem to continue working fine - but it's impossible to test out any changes I make.

The odd thing is, once I restart Visual C++, the program will build and execute perfectly fine (unless of course I try to make a change to the code and do another build, in which case the whole scenario starts over again).

As far as I can tell, this does *not* happen if Windows XP is in Safe Mode. However, with XP in normal mode, I have tried shutting down literally every single running process (except for the ones it won't let me shut down), yet this "freezing" still happens.

If anyone has any idea what's wrong, any help would be greatly appreciated.