Error while linking asm code

I wrote a simple program in assembly language which will simply display a message box in windows 7 32 bit

.386
.model flat, stdcall
option casemap :none

extrn MessageBoxA@16 : PROC
extrn ExitProcess@4 : PROC

.data
    HelloWorld db "Welcome to SecurityTube.net!", 0
    MsgTitle db "First MessageBox", 0

.code
start:
    mov eax, 0
    push eax
    lea ebx, MsgTitle
    push ebx
    lea ebx, HelloWorld
    push ebx
    push eax
    call MessageBoxA@16
    push eax
    call ExitProcess@4
end start

I use following command for assembling and linking

ml /c /coff helloworld.asm
link /subsystem:windows /defaultlib:kernel32.lib /defaultlib:user32.lib helloworld.obj

Program assembled perfectly. However, while linking, i got this error:

Microsoft (R) Incremental Linker Version 5.12.8078
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp 1992-1998. All rights reserved.

LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file "kernel32.lib"

Why i am getting this error and how to mitigate it?

Solution

The command you're looking for is:

ml.exe helloworld.asm
    /coff
    /link
        /subsystem:windows
        /defaultlib:kernel32.lib
        /defaultlib:user32.lib
        /libpath:C:\...somewhere...
        helloworld.obj

Note that instead of running ml first with the /c switch (which assembles only without linking), and then running link, I've just combined it all into a single command line. This will run MASM to assemble the code, and then immediately link it.

The magic sauce is the /link switch, which passes every argument that comes after it to the linker.

Notice the other new switch that you did not have: /libpath. This is the one that tells the linker where the LIB files can be found. They are part of the Windows SDK, so you'll need to locate that directory on your hard disk and substitute that path for C:\...somewhere.... The exact location differs depending on which version of the SDK you have installed and how you installed it (separately, or as part of Visual Studio). If you don't have the SDK, download it here for Windows 10, or for earlier versions. (Note that the latest version is sufficient; you do not need to download every version. It supports multi-targeting.)

The documentation for MASM is all available online, including a comprehensive listing of command line options. Same thing for the linker; its options are here.

An even easier solution would be to open the Visual Studio Command Prompt and do all of your assembling and linking from there. This actually runs a batch file that sets up the environment for you so that you don't have to worry about specifying the path to all of the required SDK files (headers, libraries, etc.). You'll find this in your Start menu, or manually run:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio x.x\VC\bin\vcvars32.bat

to set up a 32-bit build environment.