fatal error LNK1123: failure during conversion to COFF

To summarize:

• Either disable incremental linking, by going to

  Project Properties 
     -> Configuration Properties 
         -> Linker (General) 
            -> Enable Incremental Linking -> "No (/INCREMENTAL:NO)"
  

• or install VS2010 SP1.

Edits (@CraigRinger): Note that installing VS 2010 SP1 will remove the 64-bit compilers. You need to install the VS 2010 SP1 compiler pack to get them back.

This affects Microsoft Windows SDK 7.1 for Windows 7 and .NET 4.0 as well as Visual Studio 2010