If you’ve worked with Visual Studio build customization, installers, or MSI setups for older projects, you’ve probably run into vspreclean and vsprecleanvsexe. These tools relate to how Visual Studio handles file and registry pre-cleaning and exclusive file locks during build or deployment operations—important when troubleshooting setup/upgrade issues for Visual Studio 2012 or when automating builds on developer machines and build servers.
vsexe.exe (Visual Studio Executable Launcher) is a wrapper utility designed to launch an executable under the Visual Studio 2012 profiler. It automatically sets up the necessary environment, starts the profiling session, and attaches the profiler to the target process. vsprecleanvsexe visual studio 2012 exclusive
During a failed or cancelled build, files like .obj, .pdb, or .tlog remain locked by a lingering mspdbsrv.exe or cl.exe. When you run a clean build, the pre-clean step fails with “exclusive access denied”. Role & Purpose
vsexe
If you start a build while debugging another instance of the same executable, the debugger holds an exclusive lock on the .exe or .pdb. Locked Intermediate Files During a failed or cancelled