Visual Studio's latest meltdown - something wrong in "sal.h"? What the?

[LighthouseMike]

Good evening (or morning, or whatever),

So before I copy all my code and do a git reset --hard, I figured I'd see if anyone in here has ever dealt with this particular VS disintegration. For no apparent reason, it dissolves into a heap of dust with the following nonsense:

1>C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.32.31326\include\sal.h(2361,1): error C2144: syntax error: 'int' should be preceded by ';'
1>C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.32.31326\include\sal.h(2361,8): error C4430: missing type specifier - int assumed. Note: C++ does not support default-int

So whatever this mysterious header is, I've never touched it (and read at least 5 or 6 posts on other forums with that line, "I've never touched it"). I don't know what it does. I can somehow open it in Visual Studio, but that doesn't explain where it came from, much less why VS is spontaneously combusting over it. Previous research I've done suggests... a syntax error? Somewhere? My only hypothesis at the moment (and I'm not even sure how to test it) is that it's something buried deep in the internal guts of Windows itself (we're talking kernel level deeeeeeeeeeeep). Like maybe because I include Windows.h, that includes aaa.h which includes sab.h which includes sac.h all the way to sal, and that's where it gets all Splodey McBoom. They should really rename this piece of... software to Visual Wipe-Out! Visual Screwy-Louie-Spwey-Kablooey!

Odds are the only solution is trying the hard reset, then gradually reintroducing the code I was in when it decided it hated me again. It could be a syntax error in my code, but one that is so atrocious that Visual Studio doesn't know how to handle it gracefully. Like missing a semicolon in a header is something that confuses the daylights out of Windows sometimes... but I know it's not that cuz I checked liek 3 times. Poor old VS, I shouldn't make fun of it so much - but boy howdy does it give me reasons to!

[LighthouseMike]

In case anyone else rams their head against this one, the answer was simple: a CTRL-F (Find) attempt printed an actual F (followed by what I wanted to find), which of course drove Visual Studio bananas. Poor, miserable old IDE... no wonder Microsoft has fallen in love with Linux these days. gcc and g++ are not without their warts either, but at least they don't overreact like a frustrated human when you goof.