rust-analyzer can't find rust.lld.exe

[RocketPunches]

I've been trying to get a rust workspace up and running on Windows 11 in VSCode so I can tinker with some stuff, but no matter what I do, the rust-analyzer extension spits out a cascading list of the same error, basically saying it can't find the rust.lld.exe linker and thus can do nothing.

In essence it's this, a few dozen times, with notes about whatever build script couldn't be run strewn in. (I've attached the text output of the log if you want to look, it is just the same error over and over again, however.)
rust-analyzer_log.log

2025-07-23T07:41:51.9470204-04:00 ERROR FetchBuildDataError: error: linker `rust.lld.exe` not found
  |
  = note: program not found


note: the msvc targets depend on the msvc linker but `link.exe` was not found


note: please ensure that Visual Studio 2017 or later, or Build Tools for Visual Studio were installed with the Visual C++ option.


note: VS Code is a different product, and is not sufficient.

I have confirmed that the rust linker is present at the expected path, and added to my $PATH variable like it's supposed to be. I have double checked the visual studio installation is correct (it is). I've also completely scrubbed Visual Studio, its build tools, VSCode and my rust installation completely, and started over from scratch, with no luck.

[lnicola]

Do you have the linker set somewhere in your Cargo config?

[RocketPunches]

Still complaining about rust.lld.exe

[lnicola]

We don't have anything to do with rust.lld.exe, so it has to be somewhere in your config.

[RocketPunches]

I'm really not sure where to start looking to fix this, as my entire rust setup is basically fresh out of the box. I haven't touched anything, so I have no idea why rust-analyzer would be looking for something syntactically incorrect here, or even how to point it to the right thing.

[RocketPunches]

Alright, somehow settings.json in VSCode got

    "rust-analyzer.cargo.extraEnv": {
        "RUSTFLAGS": "-Clinker=rust.lld.exe"
    },

To my knowledge I didn't do that, maybe I ran a script that added that incorrectly by accident, but changing it to rust-lld.exe fixed the issue. Sorry for the morning noobery.