Visual Studio hangs at Review Solution Actions dialog - visual-studio

When trying to open an older C++ project in Visual Studio 2019 Professional, I keep getting this "Review Solution Actions" dialog that hangs Visual Studio.
I've tried starting in safe mode and resetting my user settings but neither of those have done anything.
Once this dialog shows up it just hangs here and I cannot focus on this dialog or Visual Studio. It's as functional as the image of it posted in this question.
I can successfully "End Task" in Task Manager (as opposed to killing the process) so it's still doing something in the Windows message loop (and redrawing)-- but strangely won't obtain focus or allow drags. Haven't seen that before.
Is there a way to retarget this project via the command line? Is there something else I can do?
Version: VisualStudio.16.Release/16.4.5+29806.167

Updating to 16.5.2 resolved this, thankfully.

Related

Visual Studio pops to the foreground without reason

I am experiencing this weird problem with Visual Studio 2022.
I created the skeleton of a new web application using individual accounts.
I have run the first migration, created some default accounts in the aspnet identity tables and
finally launched the application to test if everything was correctly setup in my PC.
Visual Studio compiles the application without problems and launch the defaul browser (Edge).
The standard Welcome page appears but immediately Visual Studio pops to the front doing nothing.
No errors, no messages nothing wrong. Just the code window here to obscure the browser window.
Now, I switch to the browser window and click on the Login link.
Again, the login window briefly appears in the browser but it is immediately obscured by Visual Studio.
Switch again to the browser, compile the required fields and click on login.
Again Visual Studio thinks that he is the best app on the planet and brings itself on the foregroud.
I have tried to switch to another browser, but the results are the same.
I have tried with an existing application written with Visual Studio 2019, but again the "pop in front of everything" still happens.
I have tried to search for this problem but probably I haven't find the right keywords to represent this problem correctly to a search engine.
I think that probably I have something wrong in the Visual Studio configuration, but it is practically impossible to find something there if you don't know what to look for.
The only option that seems to be related is "Bring Visual Studio to the foreqround when breaking in the debugger" but even after uncheking the option the "pop to front" persists.
So my question is simple. Has anyone experienced a similar behavior? If yes how have you fixed it?
Well, probably this situation is so messed that none will ever see this post.
Nevertheless I would like to share how I have finally resolved the question and leave here a warning for future readers.
The cause of Visual Studio 2022 hiccups is, probably, the import of Visual Studio 2019 settings.
I thought that it was a good idea to set 2022 with the same options used in the last 3 years so, after installing VS 2022
I used this very useful menu (Tools->Import Export Settings) to export all the Visual Studio 2019 Settings in an XML file and I reimported it in 2022.
I thought, if the file is not compatible with VS2022 surely it will abort the import. Right?
No, Visual Studio 2022 doesn't complain during the import of 2019 settings.
But something in that exported file should be very broken.
I have resolved the problem with these steps
Close Visual Studio 2022
Open a command prompt window with administrator rights
Change to the install folder for Visual Studio 2022 and then change dir to subfolder "Common7\IDE"
Finally execute the command
devenv /ResetSettings
After this everything started to work as expected without problems.
I have saved the broken VS2019 setting file and tried to compare it with one produced after the reset,
but they have too many differences to extract something useful to identify the specific problem area

Visual Studio JIT Debugger hangs

I've always used System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Launch() as a quick way to debug web services. I get a dialog asking me to choose a debugger, I pick "New instance of Visual Studio" and it fires up VS and lets me step through the code.
That has suddenly stopped working. Now I get the dialog, and choose Visual Studio, and the VS splash screen appears, and then it just hangs. The dialog window says "Not Responding" and I have to force it to close. Even then, a VS instance is left hanging around in Task Manager and I have to kill it manually.
I've tried repairing Visual Studio, and uninstalling and reinstalling Visual Studio, and nothing fixes it.
In desperation, I completely flattened my PC and reinstalled everything from scratch. It lasted about a day and then JIT debugging started hanging again. I was on Windows 10 and Visual Studio 17.4.1 before, and I'm on Windows 11 and Visual Studio 17.4.2 now.
To make sure that it's not a problem with some particular code, I created a one-line console app System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Launch(); and that crashes just the same.
Has anybody experienced anything similar, or have any idea what could be going wrong?
I don't know why that fails, but I suggest to attach to a running instance of Visual Studio instead. Start Visual Studio first, and then when the "launch debugger" window appears, select the running VS instance. Preferably, you should even open the correct solution/project first. If you attach to that instance, all your source code and the project structure is available for debugging.
Another alternative: Instead of using Debugger.Launch(), use a code snipped such as
while (!Debugger.IsAttached)
{
Thread.Sleep(100);
}
at the beginning of your program and attach the debugger from within Visual Studio (using the menu option Debug->Attach to process)
I had the same exact problem and after updated to VS version 17.4.4 the issue disappeared. All good now.

VisualStudio not saving Startup Window

Since a few weeks I have had this infuriating problem.
Whenever I start VS it opens an empty environment.
I tried to change that in Options > Environment > Startup from "Empty environment" to "Start window". After pressing "OK" I restarted VS completely and reopened it. Again: a new empty environment opens.
After reinstalling VS several times now I gave up and want to know, if someone had a similar problem and knows a fix for this problem.
Visual Studio Enterprise 2019 (16.8.3)
Installed Workloads from VS-Installer:
ASP.NET and web development
Azure development
Python development
.NET desktop development
Desktop development with C++
Data storage and processing
.NET Core cross-platform development
Additional Extensions:
JetBrains ReSharper 2020.2.4
Visual Studio Tools for Tizen
*all the extensions are up-to-date
After MONTHS I finally found a solution. I basically tried to uninstall all extensions and discovered that this issue only occurs while ReSharper is installed. I didn't find anything regarding this on the internet, therefore I searched all of the options and I finally found the issue!
If you have the same issue and have ReSharper installed (currently 2020.3.3) open Visual Studio and go to Extensions/ReSharper/Options. A new window will pop up. Then navigate to Environment/Performance Guide and under the group Visual Studio preferences affecting performance you'll find the item Show empty environment at startup. Set it from Fix Silently to Ignore. Click Save and close this window.
Additionally, you have reset the specific Visual Studio option. Therefore open Tools/Options and navigate to Environment/Startup and set the On startup, open: to Start window. Click OK and restart Visual Studio to check if the Start Window now gets displayed correctly.

VS attaching to process disabled

A few days ago, the attach button in "Attach to process" dialogue became disabled in VS 2010 and VS 2008 likewise. At first I thought that it is just an extension I've installed in VS 2010 but then I noticed it is the same in VS 2008. The both VS's a re running in administrative mode and on Windows 7.
I looked around but I can't seem to find a solution to this.
If anybody has encountered an similar problem, a little help would do great.
Thanks upfront.
EDIT: Attached a picture of the dialogue!
Where it says
you should press 'Select' and ensure at least managed is ticked. (or choose automatic)
otherwise, the 'Attach' button will be disabled.
It could also be because there is already another debugger attached to the process - probably the currently running instance of Visual Studio but it may be another instance of Visual Studio, or another debugger entirely (such as WinDbg or a remote debugging session).
Check the "Processes" window (usually found under Debug -> Windows -> Processes) to see what processes Visual Studio is debugging.
Try stopping Visual Studio but don't close the process.
I have come across a weird situation under which Attach button was disabled. This was because of DebugDiag. Please refer the following thread for info.
I was trying to debug a windows service as described here and had the same issue. The solution was to run Visual Studio as Administrator and select to see processes from all users.

Visual studio debug console sometimes stays open and is impossible to close

EDIT #3 : Microsoft has released a 'fix' to this problem which is available here. I haven't had the time to test it, but I those who want to are welcome to leave their feedback here !
Sometimes when I run an application from Visual Studio and it crashes or I stop it using the stop button in the debug menu (Debug->Stop Debugging (Shift-F5)), the console of said application stays open... and never closes. I cannot close it by clicking the 'x' button in the top right corner. I cannot kill the process as it is not even listed in taskmgr.
I have seen this problem documented in different places on the web, but no solution so far.
I am running on windows XP SP3, using visual studio 2008 w/ SP1.
1- What could be causing this ?
2- Is there a fix ?
thanks alot.
JC
EDIT: There is no MyApp.vshost.exe process to close, and closing visual studio does not close the console either. Worse even, if I try to restart my computer windows will hang and never close, I need to do a forced shut down.
EDIT #2 : (from Brad Sullivan, Program Manager - Visual Studio Debugger on March 2nd)
[...] this issue is likely not in Visual Studio since it also occurs in scenarios where Visual Studio is not present. We are in the process of handing over our investigation to the Windows Servicing team.
But for now, removing the KB978037 update and it's related files seems to work.
This is a bug introduced in security update KB978037. Back out this update and you'll be back to normal.
Also see here:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vsdebug/thread/e6d4a4f5-7002-401a-90e1-6174d7f9e3ca
Microsoft has released a 'fix' to this problem which is available here. I haven't had the time to test it, but I those who want to are welcome to leave their feedback here !
There are a couple of things that could be happening here. Try closing down the following process and see which one, if any close down the Console application as well.
The Hosting Process: Typically named YourExecutable.vshost.exe
Visual Studio
If closing the hosting process fixes the issue then one quick work around is to disable the hosting process itself.
Right Click on Project -> Properties -> Debug -> Uncheck the hosting process
If closing down Visual Studio fixes the problem then it's potentially a bug in Visual Studio. Please file a bug on connect.
http://connect.microsoft.com
Visual Studio Debugger Team has already acknowledge this issues on their blog. check the below url for more information.
http://blogs.msdn.com/debugger/archive/2010/03/11/help-my-console-windows-won-t-go-away.aspx

Resources