I have a C++ project using CMake and Boost that compiles/links under Linux without any problems. I'm working towards porting this to Windows via Visual C++ 2012. My CMake configuration is as follows: set(BOOST_ROOT ${DEPENDENCY_DIR}/boost/) set(Boost_USE_STATIC_LIBS ON) set(Boost_USE_MULTITHREADED ON) set(Boost_USE_STATIC_RUNTIME OFF) find_package(Boost 1.53 COMPONENTS system date_time chrono serialization filesystem program_options random thread regex unit_test_framework) message(STATUS "Boost Version:" ${Boost_VERSION}) message(STATUS "Boost Include Dirs:" ${Boost_INCLUDE_DIR}) message(STATUS "Boost Libraries:") foreach(lib ${Boost_LIBRARIES}) message(STATUS ${lib}) endforeach() include_directories(${Boost_INCLUDE_DIR}) and I'm using `target_link_libraries` with `${Boost_LIBRARIES}` in my targets. Also above `message` commands show all found files without any problem. Moreover required libraries show `libboost_unit_test_framework-vc110-mt-gd-1_53.lib` as it should be. (Screenshot: http://i.stack.imgur.com/UgPTG.png) However, when I build one of the targets, I get 2>LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file 'boost_unit_test_framework-vc110-mt-gd-1_53.lib' I removed another Boost library and from the error it seems the linker is able to find others. (like `chrono` or `serialization`.) But the error message is a bit different. The filename has _lib_ in front of it. 2>LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file 'libboost_serialization-vc110-mt-gd-1_53.lib' Why does VC++ looks for a file prefixed with **boost** and not **libboost** for unit_test_framework? Best Regards, Emre PS: This is crossposted to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15815467/ if you like to answer there.