Failed to uninstall Microsoft visual studio ide - visual-studio

After failing to update and launch VS installer, I decided to reinstall Microsoft Visual Studio.
Neither setup.exe nor InstallCleanup.exe worked for me, so I decided to delete all files in the Microsoft Visual Studio folder, leaving nothing but the empty "Installer" folder which cannot be deleted, because apparently it's being used by a program I cannot spot in the task manager. How do I gain access to delete or modify Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer so that I can reinstall VS?

I managed to do it using an app named "lock hunter".
It's a free software found on https://lockhunter.com. after installation it adds an option named "what is locking this file?" when right-clicking any file or folder in a file explorer. It will open a window where all processes using that file are listed, and you can terminate them from there.
Turns out Installcleanup.exe was still trying to clean MSIs, even though it would never finish and was just holding an empty folder hostage. By ending that process I was able to delete "Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer" and reinstall the program, which thankfully worked perfectly this time around.

Related

When I download an extension for Visual Studio 2019, it doesn't get installed on restart

When I download an extension within Visual Studio 2019 IDE, it downloads successfully and gives a message "changes will be scheduled and that the installs will begin when I close all windows". If I close all the open windows in IDE, nothing happens. Also after a restart, I do not see the extension installed.
changes will be scheduled and that the installs will begin when I
close all windows
To close all windows, try going File menu => Exit to close VS instead of clicking the X button.
Here're some other workarounds I found:
1.Download the extension from VS Marketplace and double-click the xx.vsix file to start installing manually.
2.If the popup doesn't show, find the xx.vsix in %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Temp folder, run it there to install. See this.
Of course these are workarounds, however I can't reproduce same issue in my machine. So I guess maybe something is broken in VS or one unknown process interrupts the installation. I suggest we can make sure we're in Admin permission, run a VS repair(or Update VS to latest 16.3.6), and check if one process like cmd(found one similar issue whose cause is about cmd.exe) by task manager...
Hope all above helps if someone meets similar issue :)

Visual Studio 2017 freezes on startup

When I start VisualStudio it frezzes on the start screen. But when I start it a second time while the first instance is open the second instance works fine.
It's not that important but what could cause that problem?
Not sure. Sometimes some Visual Studio extensions are locking up Visual Studio.
I think by default Visual Studio tries to update these extensions
that have been installed automatically.
Recently I was trying to run Visual Studio (at Home) and it would freeze if I tried to open a specific project. But I was busy, so I didn't pursue it further and did other things. Then a week or a few days later I tried to run Visual Studio (at home), and it locked up when I ran it. I tried really hard to fix it.
There is a way I don't like where you can delete all or most of the
extensions from the place Visual Studio installs them, but this is
messy, and it is easy to get rid of something you need, and may hard
to get it back where it works correctly again. So I now recommend against this since there is a better solution now, below!
I searched to find a solution, and someone on a Microsoft board I think said to run from a command prompt as Administrator: DEVENV /RESETSETTINGS, I tried that and it didn't work for me. Then I thought, run DEVENV /? to see what I can see, and I saw :
DEVENV /SAFEMODE
So I tried that and it worked! Note: it was still being run from the Visual Studio Developer Prompt as an Administrator.
Visual Studio loaded up correctly, and I was able to look at the
installed extensions.
Eventually I noticed that they all or a lot of them were disabled (probably because of this SAFEMODE parameter), and I noticed that it the most recently updated were at the top of the list. I noticed that a lot of them had been automatically updated by Visual Studio and started Uninstalling a bunch of the more recent ones, and reverted at least one of them, then later uninstalled it. Eventually, after about 6 to 10 uninstalls, I got it to where Visual Studio would load normally, without the /SAFEMODE parameter! Cool!
So I turned off the automatic updates, so this will never happen automatically again. If I load a new extension or update and existing one manually, I should always exit Visual Studio and reload it after not doing too many updates or installing too many extensions to see if these extensions allow Visual Studio to load.
Sometimes an extension will not freeze Visual Studio, but will have errors. The ones that are the big problem are the ones which prevent Visual Studio from loading all the way and freezing it up. But with the above solution, you can eventually, cleanly, uninstall all the latest updates or new installed extensions until you finally get Visual Studio to load normally!
This workaround should be more widely known, so I am putting my solution to it here. Hopefully what I found should help someone else who is in a hurry, without having a lot of time to burn trying to get Visual Studio running again without freezing!
I use Visual Studio Community 2017, and I got this same issue on startup until I stumbled on this solution that deals with some corruption in the .suo file. Before I open Visual Studio for the day, I first delete the .suo file in my project folder, and it starts up just fine.
It's in a folder called .vs next to the .sln file. You may have to go to folder options View and check "Hidden Items" in order to find this folder. Dig down in that folder and you'll find the .suo file. Delete it. When you startup the project in Visual Studio, it will automatically create a new .suo file. So you'll have to do this every time you reopen.

Visual studio installation path grayed out

I had to reformat one of my drives (T:) and change its purpose. I had Visual studio 2015 installed on it, uninstalled it before formatting and now the drive has a different letter (can't change it, other things installed on it). I want to install visual studio 2015 again, but on the C: drive. When I run the installation, I get this:
The T: drive doesn't exist anymore, and I can't change the installation path to another drive.
I tried some solutions where I had to delete registry keys, but didn't succeed since most of the solutions were for older versions of visual studio. Is there a way to change the path?
Run installer in command line (Admin Mode) In folder keep File vs_community_ENU.exe
and put this command
vs_community_ENU.exe /uninstall /force
Then put this
vs_community_ENU /CustomInstallPath C:\VisualStudio2015
NewDrive:\VisualStudio2015
it work for me
Hope this helps
I had the same problem. I had an installed Visual Studio on a crashed harddisk.
I tried everything above, nothing worked. You should use this method as ultima ratio:
There is a VisualStudioUninstaller by Microsoft.
Download it
Extract it
Run it with Setup.ForcedUninstall.exe in an administrator command prompt
If this fails:
Start an elevated powershell:
install-package msi -provider PowerShellGet
get-msicomponentinfo '{777CBCAC-12AB-4A57-A753-4A7D23B484D3}' | get-msiproductinfo | uninstall-msiproduct -properties IGNOREDEPENDENCIES=ALL
Try again. If this fails, replace the GUID with one of the following:
Visual Studio 2015: {777CBCAC-12AB-4A57-A753-4A7D23B484D3}
Visual Studio 2013: {56E09E41-21B6-4F87-8D60-0787D028ECDD}
Visual Studio 2012: {DB786F13-64A8-45D7-8C03-0E819DF9F7B3}
Visual Studio 2010: {01696F98-947C-4CF9-8BD3-ABE70332FDED}
Sources: blogs.msdn.microsoft.com
and
landinghub.visualstudio.com
If this fails get an exorcist or/and reinstall your system.
I know you said it worked, but for some (including me) it did not. After multiple hours, however, I found a way. Here are the steps to my solution:
If you have not uninstalled VS2015 yet, do it through Control Panel.
Run the setup (ect. vs_community.exe).
If you cannot install on desired drive, keep reading here :)
Copy the path from where the VS2015 want you to install it on (e.g.: "D:\Programmer\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0").
Open regedit(Just press windows key, type it in, and press Enter).
Warning, now you are in the windows registry, be careful or you may cause system-wide instability.
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData Here there should be 2 folders called something like S-1-5-18 and S-1-5-21-345634235-23423416487. Just start with the one with the smallest number.
Go into the Components folder, and here you should see many folders with numbers and letters as name. Right click on the first of these, and click Search. ("Find" for Windows 10)
Paste the path from step 4. here, and make sure that the 3 top boxes are checked (they should be by default).
Right-click the first result of the search and click export. Save it somewhere you remember, then right-click it again and delete it this time.
Run the VS2015 setup again (vs_community.exe) and check if you can change the path now. If not go back to 9. and continue.
If it worked, just install VS2015 and just remember where you put your saved reg files. If anything goes wrong, you can restore them again by running the file.
Hope this helps someone!
This worked for me:
Start procmon and run the VS installation.
In procmon, find the relevant registry by looking for:
"HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\*\Components"
Make sure the key you've found was successfully opened (result should be SUCCESS)
Open regedit and find the relevant Components folder.
Search for the key you have found.
Export it for backup, and then delete it.
Hope it works for you too :-)
For me, it was the mistake of installing SQL Server Management Studio 2016 before installing Visual Studio 2015. SSMS 2016 is now based of VS 2015 Shell Core. And the new setup doesn't allow for any interaction except pressing the Install button. That way, part of VS 2015 was installed to C: drive. And hence, all options to change VS 2015 Enterprise install path failed.
I removed SMSS 2016 and, explicitly, VS 2015 Shell Core and then tried to install VS 2015 and it worked with Custom Path and Browse button.
You can use junction tool by Microsoft to create a REAL directory on other partition (e.g. D:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0) and make a symbol link to it as C:\Program Files (x86)..., just like the command shows below, then windows will use C:\Program Fil.. as path and the real dirs/files are in D:\Prog...
junction.exe 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0' 'D:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0'
Download junction tool from https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896768.aspx
In case someone still has this problem (I had it, since I deleted my partition, on which Visual Studio was installed before):
Open the registry, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Setup
and there you will find some files. At least one of these files should contain the old path. Delete the file and the installation should work now.
In case there are other people who couldn't get it to work with the solutions already posted, here's what I did:
My problem was, that I had VS installed on partition E. The harddrive containing E crashed one day, and I couldn't uninstall VS properly anymore.
/uninstall /force wouldn't do the trick, since the setup would crash every time.
So I took my partition "D" and gave it the letter "E". Now I was able to install VS to the specified path. After that, I uninstalled it with /uninstall /force and the setup finished successfully.
After that I changed the partition "E" back to "D" and was able to install VS to "D".
I hope this helps someone with the same problem.
I know this is old, but just so you know there are command line switches that are very helpful for this sort of thing. In the command prompt, call your executable followed by /CustomInstallPath then the directory, as follows (adjust your executable pathname, of course, as necessary):
vs_community__e45cb735eddf4e4b9d95904be6e1ba26.exe /CustomInstallPath
Just a heads up, this didn't work for me the first time, so don't be afraid to try a couple times. I left my computer for the weekend (logged out), and ran the exact same command without doing anything else and it worked. Go figure...
In powershell:
Remove-Item
Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Components\CACBC777BA2175A47A35A4D7324B483D
see https://stackoverflow.com/a/33839884/3353857

Visual Studio 2015 does not start

We have installed Visual Studio 2015 Professional on Windows 7. It was working fine. But after we installed updates from the menu Tools-->'Extensions and Updates' today the Visual studio does not start anymore. we tried using 'run as administrator' as well. From the Start menu we right click on 'Visual Studio 2015', then 'run as administrator', the usual dialog box asking for permissions appears, we click on 'Yes', splash screen for Visual Studio appears for a second and then disappears. On the Task Manager, it does not appear as well.
Re-starting the system does not help either. .NET 4.6 is installed and Visual Studio 2012 on the same system is working fine.
UPDATE 1
The issue started after we installed the last update (from within VS2015) that had something to do with universal apps I think.
UPDATE 2
At the exact time when I start VS2015, one Windows Event log gets generated under security section as follows:
EventID 6281
Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing
Audit Failure
Message: Code Integrity determined that the page hashes of an image file are not valid.
The file could be improperly signed without page hashes or corrupt due to unauthorized modification.
The invalid hashes could indicate a potential disk device error.
File Name: \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\l3codeca.acm
I had the same problem recently after I upgraded one of the packages. I tried "everything" and the only option that worked was the /Setup switch (I was logged in as Administrator, but don't think that's required).
c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE>devenv.exe /Setup
c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE>devenv.exe
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ex6a2fad.aspx
Here's what worked for me.
Go to the Command Prompt and navigate to the folder with devenv.exe
In my case it was C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE
then execute
Devenv.exe /ResetSettings
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241273.aspx
I had the same problem. It was caused by Visual Studio Extensions adding paths to $PATH, which made $PATH grow too long (>2048 bytes).
This breaks VS and lots of other stuff on your machine.
Removing outdated and duplicate lines from $PATH made it short enough and VS2015 and everything worked again.
If nothing above works (like in my case) then open a registry editor, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio and delete all 14.0 directories.
It will reset all VS settings and next launch will be like first one after installation.
Found answer here
After trying the other solutions in this thread, what finally worked for me was:
From an elevated Command Prompt, navigate to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE".
Execute:
devenv.exe /Log C:\temp.log
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241272.aspx
The log should contain a matching set of Begin and End entries for every extension:
<description>Begin package load ...
...
<description>End package load ...
If the last extension is missing the End package load entry, you need to uninstall that extension.
Execute:
devenv.exe /SafeMode
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241278.aspx
Go to "Tools -> Extensions and Updates" and uninstall the offending extension.
Exit VS. Start VS as normal. In case it still doesn't work, repeat the procedure.
Nothing of above helped me, What helped me was to copy devenu.exe from other computer which had VS installed and then replacing it with mine computers devenu.exe.
Run C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Blend.exe
Right click on some file in "Solution Explorer" such as "default.aspx" and select "Edit in Visual Studio"
For me it only shows Visual studio 2015 window without disappearing and showing IDE or any error.
Non of following solutions worked for my normal domain user but there was no issue running it with administrator.
Devenv.exe /ResetSettings
Reinstalling
Repairing
Watching event viewer for more details
Cleaning temp and cleanup and finally seeing some error
Finally I deleted my whole profile from admin via [System properties]-> [Advanced] -> [Profile] and it resolved the problem.
Just before that copy your user folder somewhere or at least your desktop and user folders and also your bookmarks and settings.
I tried several methods above and even re-installed VS but it did not work. The final solution was to really completely remove all the settings and registries of VS with the tool VisualStudioUninstaller. After uninstalling and re-installing it, it is up again.

Visual studio installer retains previous installation path [duplicate]

I had to reformat one of my drives (T:) and change its purpose. I had Visual studio 2015 installed on it, uninstalled it before formatting and now the drive has a different letter (can't change it, other things installed on it). I want to install visual studio 2015 again, but on the C: drive. When I run the installation, I get this:
The T: drive doesn't exist anymore, and I can't change the installation path to another drive.
I tried some solutions where I had to delete registry keys, but didn't succeed since most of the solutions were for older versions of visual studio. Is there a way to change the path?
Run installer in command line (Admin Mode) In folder keep File vs_community_ENU.exe
and put this command
vs_community_ENU.exe /uninstall /force
Then put this
vs_community_ENU /CustomInstallPath C:\VisualStudio2015
NewDrive:\VisualStudio2015
it work for me
Hope this helps
I had the same problem. I had an installed Visual Studio on a crashed harddisk.
I tried everything above, nothing worked. You should use this method as ultima ratio:
There is a VisualStudioUninstaller by Microsoft.
Download it
Extract it
Run it with Setup.ForcedUninstall.exe in an administrator command prompt
If this fails:
Start an elevated powershell:
install-package msi -provider PowerShellGet
get-msicomponentinfo '{777CBCAC-12AB-4A57-A753-4A7D23B484D3}' | get-msiproductinfo | uninstall-msiproduct -properties IGNOREDEPENDENCIES=ALL
Try again. If this fails, replace the GUID with one of the following:
Visual Studio 2015: {777CBCAC-12AB-4A57-A753-4A7D23B484D3}
Visual Studio 2013: {56E09E41-21B6-4F87-8D60-0787D028ECDD}
Visual Studio 2012: {DB786F13-64A8-45D7-8C03-0E819DF9F7B3}
Visual Studio 2010: {01696F98-947C-4CF9-8BD3-ABE70332FDED}
Sources: blogs.msdn.microsoft.com
and
landinghub.visualstudio.com
If this fails get an exorcist or/and reinstall your system.
I know you said it worked, but for some (including me) it did not. After multiple hours, however, I found a way. Here are the steps to my solution:
If you have not uninstalled VS2015 yet, do it through Control Panel.
Run the setup (ect. vs_community.exe).
If you cannot install on desired drive, keep reading here :)
Copy the path from where the VS2015 want you to install it on (e.g.: "D:\Programmer\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0").
Open regedit(Just press windows key, type it in, and press Enter).
Warning, now you are in the windows registry, be careful or you may cause system-wide instability.
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData Here there should be 2 folders called something like S-1-5-18 and S-1-5-21-345634235-23423416487. Just start with the one with the smallest number.
Go into the Components folder, and here you should see many folders with numbers and letters as name. Right click on the first of these, and click Search. ("Find" for Windows 10)
Paste the path from step 4. here, and make sure that the 3 top boxes are checked (they should be by default).
Right-click the first result of the search and click export. Save it somewhere you remember, then right-click it again and delete it this time.
Run the VS2015 setup again (vs_community.exe) and check if you can change the path now. If not go back to 9. and continue.
If it worked, just install VS2015 and just remember where you put your saved reg files. If anything goes wrong, you can restore them again by running the file.
Hope this helps someone!
This worked for me:
Start procmon and run the VS installation.
In procmon, find the relevant registry by looking for:
"HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\*\Components"
Make sure the key you've found was successfully opened (result should be SUCCESS)
Open regedit and find the relevant Components folder.
Search for the key you have found.
Export it for backup, and then delete it.
Hope it works for you too :-)
For me, it was the mistake of installing SQL Server Management Studio 2016 before installing Visual Studio 2015. SSMS 2016 is now based of VS 2015 Shell Core. And the new setup doesn't allow for any interaction except pressing the Install button. That way, part of VS 2015 was installed to C: drive. And hence, all options to change VS 2015 Enterprise install path failed.
I removed SMSS 2016 and, explicitly, VS 2015 Shell Core and then tried to install VS 2015 and it worked with Custom Path and Browse button.
You can use junction tool by Microsoft to create a REAL directory on other partition (e.g. D:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0) and make a symbol link to it as C:\Program Files (x86)..., just like the command shows below, then windows will use C:\Program Fil.. as path and the real dirs/files are in D:\Prog...
junction.exe 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0' 'D:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0'
Download junction tool from https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896768.aspx
In case someone still has this problem (I had it, since I deleted my partition, on which Visual Studio was installed before):
Open the registry, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Setup
and there you will find some files. At least one of these files should contain the old path. Delete the file and the installation should work now.
In case there are other people who couldn't get it to work with the solutions already posted, here's what I did:
My problem was, that I had VS installed on partition E. The harddrive containing E crashed one day, and I couldn't uninstall VS properly anymore.
/uninstall /force wouldn't do the trick, since the setup would crash every time.
So I took my partition "D" and gave it the letter "E". Now I was able to install VS to the specified path. After that, I uninstalled it with /uninstall /force and the setup finished successfully.
After that I changed the partition "E" back to "D" and was able to install VS to "D".
I hope this helps someone with the same problem.
I know this is old, but just so you know there are command line switches that are very helpful for this sort of thing. In the command prompt, call your executable followed by /CustomInstallPath then the directory, as follows (adjust your executable pathname, of course, as necessary):
vs_community__e45cb735eddf4e4b9d95904be6e1ba26.exe /CustomInstallPath
Just a heads up, this didn't work for me the first time, so don't be afraid to try a couple times. I left my computer for the weekend (logged out), and ran the exact same command without doing anything else and it worked. Go figure...
In powershell:
Remove-Item
Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Components\CACBC777BA2175A47A35A4D7324B483D
see https://stackoverflow.com/a/33839884/3353857

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