fatal error C1083: Cannot open precompiled header file: 'Debug\xxxxx.pch': No such file or directory

This error lost me a lot of time but fortunatly a wise guy at stackoverflow made an extensive explanation on how to solve it, the original thread is at this link :
how-to-fix-pch-file-missing-on-build

The whole problem lies in some header files needs to be already compiled so your compilation goes through. and there is some strategy for handling header files that must be precompiled as Jive Dadson explains in his answer :

1. Right-click on your project in the Solution Explorer.
2. Click Properties at the bottom of the drop-down menu.
3. At the top left of the Properties Pages, select All Configurations from the drop-down menu.
4. Open the C/C++ tree and select Precompiled Headers
5. Precompiled Header: Select Use (/Yu)
6. Fill in the Precompiled Header File field. Standard is stdafx.h
7. Click Okay
8. If you do not have stdafx.h in your Header Files put it there. Edit it to #include all the headers you want precompiled.
9. Put a file named stdafx.cpp into your project. Put #include "stdafx.h" at the top of it, and nothing else.
10. Right-click on stdafx.cpp in Solution Explorer. Select Properties and All configurations again as in step 4 ...
11. ... but this time select Precompiled Header Create (/Yc). This will only bind to the one file stdafx.cpp.
12. Put #include "stdafx.h" at the very top of all your source files. (Unix or cygwin users: find . -name "*.cpp" | xargs -n1 sed -i '1s/^/#include "stdafx.h"\n/')

Lucky 13. Cross your fingers and hit Build.


and this did all the magic for me :)