Found a related post dated Jul 2007: http://old.nabble.com/-statechart-LNK2001-Error-on-VC-8.0- td11748021.html Attempted use of /Gm of course did not fix the problem (not sure why the OP did that to begin with as it's pretty much incompatible with building for release). Information in this thread lead to an *apparent* sollution: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.user/23065 But I'm not really impressed by that sollution and the commentary on it lead me to believe that I should not need it since I'm not making a library. The issue appears when I set the /Yu flag (use precompiled headers) in Visual Studio 2010. (10.0.30319.1) Without this flag active the program eventually compiles and links without issue. With the flag active I get exactly the same error as the OP though this is not regarding the tutorial code, which I have not tested. I also have to set /Zm200 or the build doesn't even get started (something about the space not being large enough for my 50 line header). The precompiled header is NOT including anything in boost statechart. The only boost related includes are: #define BOOST_PARAMETER_MAX_ARITY 20 #include #include #include #include #include #include #include And through other includes Boost.Units. I am not building a library nor is any of the statechart code in a library, though the build process does say it creates a .lib with the same name as the .exe I ask for but that also happens in debug. The whole thing is in a header that is included by the .cpp file that generates the .obj that causes the linker error. Again, debug builds work perfectly well with the same flags that cause the problem in release. Boost version is 1.42 Would like to know what's going on, how to correctly fix it, etc... -- http://crazyeddiecpp.blogspot.com/