"Task failed because AXImp.exe was not found" when using MSBuild 12 to build a MVC 4.0 project

The thing they recommend as step 1 ("install the Microsoft Windows SDK") is the correct advice. Install the Microsoft Windows SDK.

I struggled for a long while with this. I must've installed sixteen different things and tried twenty different versions of the registry key answer ("Task failed because AXImp.exe was not found" when using MSBuild 12 to build a MVC 4.0 project). In the end I figured out that I'd been using buildtools v14 when I should've been using 15. So instead of using C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\14.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe, I used C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\MSBuild\15.0\Bin\MSBuild.exe, and then the error disappeared.

I solved my problem installing Windows 8.1 SDK