LNK1181 :cannot open input file 'kernel32.lib'

When I am using mex, I got the "famous" error LINK : fatal error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'kernel32.lib'

I checked on many forums, there is not a unique nor simple solution. However, in my case, it seems mex is not looking at the right place.

Here what I found from running mex -v nameFile.c (last lines of codes)

link /nologo /manifest /DLL /EXPORT:mexFunction C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Temp\mex_8042614321131_11724\nameFile.obj /LIBPATH:"C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2016a\extern\lib\win64\microsoft" libmx.lib libmex.lib libmat.lib kernel32.lib user32.lib gdi32.lib winspool.lib comdlg32.lib advapi32.lib shell32.lib ole32.lib oleaut32.lib uuid.lib odbc32.lib odbccp32.lib /out:nameFile.mexw64

Error using mex LINK : fatal error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'kernel32.lib'

The problem seems to be that kernel32.lib (as well as other files e.g user32.lib) is indeed not included in the directory "C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2016a\extern\lib\win64\microsoft". However, that location does contain some .lib files such as the first file named libmx.lib (I guess that is why I don't get an error for this file)

I have looked on my computer, all the requested files are located in "C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2016a\sys\lcc64\lcc64\lib64" (including kernel32.lib, user32.lib....) So there are indeed installed on my computer.

I am pretty sure it is just a matter of a wrong path somewhere, either in some config file or environment variable...I don't know.

Note : Matlab is building with 'Microsoft Windows SDK 7.1 (C)'

Thanks for your help.

Regards, Thib

Answer 1

[Kogee Leung]

I had this same problem in my R2020b setup. What I did was using Windows search, located the directory in Matlab that hosted the kernel32.lib file. On my system it was found in:

C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2020b\sys\lcc64\lcc64\lib64

For my mexcuda command I appended:

-L"C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2020b\sys\lcc64\lcc64\lib64"

which fixed my linking problems