In my case I cannot run visual studio (2015). It starts and just prints a white screen. Interestingly everything is still on the screen, if I move to the top right hand corner the icon will change and it will read "close window". I couldn't find a way to fix this so I just tried the obvious, reinstall. Except I can't. Any attempt to re-Install any version of Visual Studio, or to Maintain/Fix/Uninstall the existing version just results in the attached picture. The zero body popup-box cannot be closed, except through task manager.
So I think at this point I have 3 possibilities. Somebody can suggest another approach... I can somehow find out how to manually uninstall Visual Studio... or I delete everything and re-install everything, the whole operating system, from scratch. I think the third option is the most likely, but am hoping that there are other options.
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I am getting an inconsistent error with Visual Studio 2015 that is severely hampering my productivity.
I am working on a very large application that I have pulled down from TFS. Sometimes when working I will try and save the file that I was working on, and have the asterix not go away and the file not save. This is despite running the application in Administrator.
Sometimes the solution is simply to rebuild the project and then try to save, however when this doesn't work I need close down visual studio and start up again, losing all my saves anyways.
This isn't too bad when I am working on .net files because the problem happens a lot less, and the solution is almost always to just rebuild, which is much better than having to re boot vs. However recently I have been working on javascript files within visual studio, and with them I get about one save, then the problems comes up, and rebuilding doesn't fix issue, causing me to have to reboot visual studio every save I make...
I have tried searching online for people who have faced a similar issue, or asked around my work, and no one seems to have ever had a similar problem. So hopefully, for my sanity's sake, someone knows what the heck is going on with my visual studio. Thanks!
I am currently running VS2019 16.7.2 and sometimes it just refuses to save no matter what I do. I try Ctrl + S, File -> "Save all", closing the window (which causes the changes to be lost) but nothing works.
Though for some reason when first I press the File -> "Save ... as" option in the menu and then cancel it, that releases the "save lock" and suddenly I am able to save again. Not really a satisfactory solution but at least all changes aren't lost. Maybe it will work on other versions as well?
I will give an answer to a problem which might not be exactly the same as the one reported by the author, but it is fairly close, and people searching for a solution to this problem are likely to arrive to this question.
In my case, in my entire solution containing thousands of files, there was only one particular file that Visual Studio was consistently failing to save when needed. As a result, after each commit, the "Git Changes" tab would not appear completely empty. All files would be committed, except this one file, which would appear as still uncommitted. So, I would have to manually save it and then amend the last commit in order to arrive at a completely empty "Git Changes" tab.
I thought that the problem might be due to some discrepancy between the letter case of the filename on disk (which is what the "Git Changes" view reports) and the letter case of the filename in the visual studio project file (which is what the "Solution Explorer" view reports) but it turns out that this was not it.
After much troubleshooting, I discovered that the following sequence of magical incantations solves the problem, I have no idea why:
In "Solution Explorer" locate the problematic file.
Rename the problematic file to something else.
Commit (with amend if you wish) the file.
Rename the file back to its original name.
Commit (with amend) the file again.
Restart Visual Studio.
The last step of restarting Visual studio is not strictly speaking necessary, but it is useful in case you have a letter case mismatch, because Visual Studio seems to be somehow caching filenames, (or at any rate not detecting that the capitalization of a filename has changed,) and restarting it makes it come to its senses.
I realize this is an old question but I had a similar problem with a solution file I had upgraded from Visual Studio 2015 to Visual Studio 2022. I was unable to save any changes to the solution, although the file was writable in notepad.
Deleting the section in the solution file as suggested by Richard Stanton's workaround fixed it for me!
developercommunity.visualstudio.com Workaround
Delete the following section from the solution file:
ProjectSection(FolderStartupServices) = postProject
{B4F97281-0DBD-4835-9ED8-7DFB966E87FF} = {B4F97281-0DBD-4835-9ED8-7DFB966E87FF}
EndProjectSection
I downloaded the emacs emulator for Visual Studio 2010, and everything seems to work fine and dandy -- except cut and paste!
I can delete regions by setting a mark (CTRL-Space) and then delete it with CTRL-W. But it seems that it never goes to the kill ring -- if I try CTRL-Y to yank it, then nothing happens.
Curiously enough, if I delete a line with CTRL-K, then the deleted line goes to the kill ring.
Visual Studio's keybinding menus suggest that CTRL-W should be cut and CTRL-Y should be paste, so this seems to be something wrong with the emulator.
Has anyone had a similar problem, or know how to cut/paste with emacs emulation on?
This is a known bug and Microsoft has declined to fix it. See: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/672582/emacs-mode-cut-copy-paste-errors
This is the bug that I submitted. At one point I had Ctrl-w/Ctrl-y working internal to Visual Studio, but never externally. I was fiddling with exporting/importing settings and it started working. Now I've had to reset Visual Studio and it's not working again, and no amount of fiddling will get it back to where I was. Sigh.
So whenever I have to do some serious cut/paste work, especially between the code and some other window, I just save the file in VS and open up Emacs, do the editing in Emacs, then save the file in Emacs. When I go back to VS it asks if I want to reload the file. A click on "Yes" in I'm back working in VS, ready to compile or whatever.
I discovered that dragging and dropping text selections from other applications, into VS2010 with the emacs package installed, DOES work. Your mileage may vary.
Since the past week I'm having a very bothering issue that blocks me from using Visual Studio.
For instance, here's what I normally see:
But as soon as I scroll a bit down (either with the arrow key, mouse wheel or the scroll bar), this is what I get:
As you can see, part of the frame seems to be "locked" in the screen.
The only way to see it right, is to make some other window cover VS's window, then going back to VS I see it right.
This is what I have tried (checking if the issue was solved after each step):
Check for updates
Repair VS2010
Remove R# and any other extension/add-in
Reinstall R# and any other extension/add-in
Remove VS2010 and any related software
Reinstall VS2010 + SP1 and updates
Remove any other unused software
Remove any recently installed/updated software
Run CCleaner
None of these steps solved the issue.
This happens only with VS2010, regardless the project or solution I'm opening.
I think you need to start looking beyond Visual Studio for issues. The next thing I'd look at is your graphics driver. Make sure you have the latest available version.
I have the same problem with VS 2012.
Scrolling up and down, does not refresh sections (rectangles) on my text editor view.
(unfortunately I've not enough reputation to post a screenshot.)
I managed to workaround it in VS 2012, by floating the editor.
i.e. Right Click on a file tab / Float All.
Otherwise I tried everything posted here, without any luck.
Hopefully someone out there knows how to undo this magic.
I had the same problem and it was due to the DameWare Development Mirror Driver.
I disabled it and the problem went away.
I'm having the same issue in VS 2015 pro.
Setting the editor windows to float fixes the problem which definitely looks like a bug in visual studio.
I'm on a Citrix virtual Desktop and the problem appears to be that a "column" of the editor (on the left side) is not redrawing properly after scrolling right, left, or down. For some reason scrolling up is fine.
For me, using VS 2013 Pro, the cause was having the JAWS Screen Reader installed, which, ominously, included a video interceptor. Once uninstalled VS started working normally again.
I had this same problem and it turns out it wasn't a graphics driver issue. The company I work for uses software that acts like a virtual monitor to remotely log into our PCs to install software and fix problems. It turns out that this extra virtual monitor was the problem. Disabling it fixed the scrolling in Visual Studio.
I had the same problem in Visual Studio 2017. When I changed the color theme to 'dark' the problem seemed to be fixed
I updated the Visual Studio Developer tools and voila! Some of my code no longer functions. I can debug, but 90% of the fixes I had made in the past day disapears whenever I debug. It worked earlier today with the old Visual Studio; but now, the effects of the code simply don't show up when I debug.
I can see the code in the code-editing window, but it doesn't debug any way I try. Does anybody know how I can fix this?
P.S. If this belongs on SuperUser, I'll be happy to put it there. Simply tell me, and I'll move it.
Manually clean the solution and output folders (by deleting the obj and bin folders while Studio is closed). Re-open and rebuild. If it's in a referenced DLL, drop the reference in the consumer, build to get a failure, then re-add.
I have this problem where I open Visual Studio and the internal windows are scattered all over the place. None of them are docked; some that should be visible have become invisible and vice versa. I then have to spend ages getting the windows back where I like them.
It only seems to happen with some solutions and only appeared recently.
For the life of me I can't fix the problem. Has anyone else been through this?
Sounds like there is definitely a problem with Visual Studio retaining your settings between round-trips and possibly your Visual Studio settings profile in general.
The solution I'd recommend is firstly to reset all settings, secondly customize things to your personal preference and finally take a backup of those customized settings. The idea is that this settings backup file can be used later to automate a quick settings restore to a point you are happy with. The following steps show how to do this and hopefully should sort out even the most confused Visual Studio setting issues:
Close down all instances of Visual Studio.
Go to Start > Programs > Visual Studio 200X > Visual Studio Tools > and choose 'Visual Studio 200X Command Prompt'
Run the sligthly less well known 'devenv.exe /ResetUserData' command. With this command you will lose all of your Visual Studio environment settings and customizations. Because of this, the /ResetUserData switch is not officially supported and Microsoft does not advertise it (the switch is not described in the help for devenv.exe you get when you type devenv.exe /? in a command prompt). Importantly, wait for the resulting devenv.exe process to disappear from Task Manager or even better Process Explorer.
When the process disappears from Task Manager or Process Explorer, run 'devenv.exe /ResetSettings' which will restore the IDE's default settings and eventually start a single instance of Visual Studio.
Now in Visual Studio choose 'Import and Export Settings...' near the bottom of the 'Tools' menu to start the Import and Export Settings Wizard.
Choose 'Reset all settings' radio button and Next > Choose 'No, just reset settings, overwriting my current settings' and Next > Choose your personal 'Settings Collection' preference, I would choose Visual C# Development Settings here (Note: What you choose here has an effect on keyboard shortcuts etc. but you can always repeat this process until happy) and click Finish.
When you get the message that 'Your settings were successfully reset to XXXXXX Development Settings.' click Close then spend a good bit of time adding any personal customizations to Visual Studio such as opening windows you always want open, customizing toolbars and adding any toolbar buttons etc.
When you are finished with your personal customization and completely happy with your setup go again to Tools > 'Import and Export Settings...'
Choose 'Export selected environment settings' radio button and Next > Tick 'All Settings' and Next > Choose a file name and directory and click Finish to store a backup of your current settings in a .vssettings file.
In future if things go haywire again head back to Tools > 'Import and Export Settings...' and this time choose 'Import selected environment settings' radio button and Next > Choose 'No, just import new settings, overwriting my current settings' and Next > Either choose the name of your .vssettings file from the list (usually under the My Settings folder) or Browse.. to where you saved the file and Next > Tick 'All Settings' and click Finish.
Importantly, close the single instance of Visual Studio. Any future instance you open should retain your latest customizations.
Visual Studio corrupts its settings with regular monotony (always has done, I've been suffering from this since the Visual C++ days, and it's still a bugbear in VS2013).
Often this seems to be totally at random, but it's highly probable after a crash.
It will also lose any changes to your settings if Visual Studio doesn't shut down cleanly - for some reason instead of saving back the settings when you OK the dialog, VS seems to wait until it quits to write back your changes, so after changing options I always quit and restart to ensure the changes have been flushed to disk. Similarly you should never change options with 2 or more instances of VS running, as the last one to quit will overwrite the settings.
In particular, there is an easily reproducible case: If you launch two or more copies at the same time (by which I mean if you start up two or more copies, so they are all initialising at the same time), they seem to fight over the settings file and it becomes corrupted or resets to defaults.
The best two workarounds I've found are:
Never launch more than one instance at a time. If you need to run several instances concurrently, then wait for the first one to finish loading its Solution before you start to launch the next.
Always use Tools > Import and Export Settings to save your settings to a backup file, so that recovering from this corruption only takes a few seconds each time it happens.
Another smaller, but still rather irritating habit is that if VS is minimised when it is quit (e.g. by shutting down), it corrupts its window position information and the next time you run it, it will be maximised.
I had a similar issue when the My Documents folder was stored on a mapped drive. If I opened VS before mapping the drive, VS would act as if it was the first time it had been opened. I solved this issue by storing the environment settings on the local disk.
I just ran into this problem too (seemed to trigger after a windows update) where I kept getting some bogus window layout no matter what I did. The above suggestions didn't work either. But luckily the suggestions in: Why doesn't VS 2008 IDE remember my preferences? of deleting:
%APPDATA%\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\windows.prf
worked.
TP
Actually I worked out what the culprit was: previous VS crashes.
If one of my Visual Studio instances crashes for whatever reason - the next time I start up VS, I get a weird batch of settings. The behaviour depends on various factors, like whether or not I had other instances of VS open at the time.
I tried Peter McG's solution, still didn't help.
What ended up working for me was to delete my VS Solution User Options (.sou). Located in the same directory as my solution.
Only bad thing is you have to redo all of your settings. This included my exception changes. Not to much to change, but if you have a lot of customization it could be a real pain.
There must be something in that file messing everything up, but deleting the whole file is quick and easy.
Which solution you're opening shouldn't matter because those settings are not solution-specific. But I wonder do you maybe have Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 installed? If so, opening a solution created in 2005 will open VS 2005 and opening a 2008 solution will open VS 2008. You may have VS 2005 even if you didn't install it. For example, InfoPath 2007 installs a VS 2005 shell.
First I would position the windows where you want them, then do a Tools -> Export Settings and include only the window layouts. That way you at least have something you can revert to.
Then I would check Tools -> Options -> Import Export Settings and make note of where the "Automatically Save My Settings To This File" path is set to. Keep an eye on that file. Do you have any sync software that may be inadvertently overwriting it? Does it point to a non-existing location?
My issue is similar, but the result is the app crashes. The problem was this value
In HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\MainWindow. It was set to "0 1000 -280 -100 3" probably due to having multiple screens and moving the UI around a lot.
Deleting this value allowed the app to restart successfully. It gets recreated on startup.
I'm facing similar issue. And it also only started recently, like, within the last 30 days or so. The only thing I remember changing in this period was updating Resharper 4.5.
I have experienced something similar. In my case the text editor colors (c# editor for example) are going haywire. The only solution that I tried and works for me is change color theme so something else and then back to what I want.
In my case its not the Window layout being corrupted but Intellisense offering code completion and pop-up help. Never had this issue for the last decade, now it happens 3 times a day at least. Win8.1, Visual Studio 2013, ReSharper 8 and now ReSharper 9 (in hopes the upgrade would fix it).
I now routinely have to
close the solution,
Tools/Import-Export Settings/Reset all settings
Close Visual Studio
Open Visual Studio Import my saved settings
RE-open the solution and continue working
I can then work fine again for quite some time until something goes awry... lets say a stack-overflow while I'm debugging. At that point I just know my settings are screwed and my Intellisense is dead again.
I'm starting to wonder if it isn't something to do with a latest Visual Studio update. There are things in there I never use like the advertising crap and Office development integration. MS Office has its own issues, like Office 64 bit not being seen by any other application such as Quicken as an installed email program. Or maybe its a conflict with ReSharper which wants to overtake and 'extend' the Intellisense feature.
Either way, I'm sure its a different manifestation of the same issue: Visual Studio settings are going sideways during normal use.
I just came across this issue in VS 2012, reset window layout was doing nothing.
I extrapolated
%APPDATA%\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\windows.prf
to
%appdata%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\Windows.index
... deleted it and was back in business!
Make sure you close all instances of VS first!