# Setting up Visual Studio for GLFW without messing with project properties

**URL:** <https://discourse.glfw.org/t/setting-up-visual-studio-for-glfw-without-messing-with-project-properties/765>\
**Category:** support\
**Created:** [September 18, 2016, 7:45pm UTC](https://discourse.glfw.org/t/setting-up-visual-studio-for-glfw-without-messing-with-project-properties/765 "2016-09-18T19:45:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Dancer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Dancer](https://discourse.glfw.org/u/Dancer)\
**Post date:** [September 18, 2016, 7:45pm UTC](https://discourse.glfw.org/t/setting-up-visual-studio-for-glfw-without-messing-with-project-properties/765/1 "2016-09-18T19:45:36Z")

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Greetings:  
I have a Win7/MSVS 2010 platform and followed instructions at  
[http://www.41post.com/5178/programming/opengl-configuring-glfw-and-glew-in-visual-cplusplus-express#part4](http://www.41post.com/5178/programming/opengl-configuring-glfw-and-glew-in-visual-cplusplus-express#part4)  
to create a Visual C++ project with GLFW. It works fine.

However, I would like to avoid setting a bunch of project configuration properties as the above site asks. So, following how I had freeGlut (which I have been using so far) going I did the following:

1. Copied the 2 files from glfw-3.2.1.bin.WIN32\include\GLFW to  
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Include\GLFW (creating the GLFW folder).

2. Copied the 3 files from glfw-3.2.1.bin.WIN32\lib-vc2010 to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Lib.

3. Copied the file glfw3.dll from glfw-3.2.1.bin.WIN32\lib-vc2010 to C:nWindowsnSystem32.

Then I created a fresh C++ project, copied in the code from the site above and didn’t touch any config properties. There are no red lines under anything but when I compile I get a bunch of “LNK2019: unresolved external symbol” errors.

Any suggestions? I did exactly these steps to successfully install freeGlut and was hoping GLFW would be same. But apparently not.

Thanks in advance for your help.  
Sam

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**Author:** ![dougbinks](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.glfw.org/dougbinks/32/39_2.png) [@dougbinks](https://discourse.glfw.org/u/dougbinks)\
**Post date:** [September 19, 2016, 8:32am UTC](https://discourse.glfw.org/t/setting-up-visual-studio-for-glfw-without-messing-with-project-properties/765/2 "2016-09-19T08:32:51Z")

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I advise you to follow the [GLFW guidelines for linking with Visual Studio](http://www.glfw.org/docs/latest/build_guide.html#build_link_win32), and not to copy anything into system and platform SDK directories.

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**Author:** ![dougbinks](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.glfw.org/dougbinks/32/39_2.png) [@dougbinks](https://discourse.glfw.org/u/dougbinks)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2016, 8:21am UTC](https://discourse.glfw.org/t/setting-up-visual-studio-for-glfw-without-messing-with-project-properties/765/3 "2016-09-20T08:21:20Z")

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Note that if you’re interested in simplified library management on Windows, the Visual C++ team have released [Vcpkg a tool to acquire and build open source libraries](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2016/09/19/vcpkg-a-tool-to-acquire-and-build-c-open-source-libraries-on-windows/) which includes GLFW3.