Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Host.exe taking over - visual-studio

My solution consists of a 195 (not a typo) C# MVC application projects w/ some ASPX pages as well running on VS2017 on Windows 10. Its nothing bleeding edge. A days ago, "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Host.exe" started taking over my machine.
Here is what I have experienced.
The app (Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Host.exe) will keep VS2017 from loading a solution I'm trying to open.
The only fix is to kill the offending exe via Task Manager.
The app will keep VS2017 from exiting when a solution I'm using is open.
The only fix is to kill the offending exe via Task Manager.
When trying to build, things slow to a grind.
The only fix is to kill the offending exe via Task Manager.
The offending app will use as many resources as possible.
I've done Win10 an Symantec virus scans on the offender. Both scans came back negative.
I've tried adjusting the app's settings in task manager so that only one or two cores can be used by the process. This helps, but sometimes I still have to kill the app to get things working in VS2017.
Whenever I kill the app, it comes back within 30 seconds.
Sometimes, things work fine. No discernible reason why.
iisreset does nothing.
I resorted to renaming the EXE file, that way it couldn't attack me again.
That seems to work, but its a hack.
Does anyone know what the root cause is, and how to resolve it?

Related

The specified task executable cmd.exe could not be run. The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process

I recently started getting this error intermittently when running or building a solution in Visual Studio 2010:
The specified task executable cmd.exe could not be run. The process cannot access the file 'c:\temp\etc' because it is being used by another process.
There are similar problems reported elsewhere, due to things like two projects building to the same folder, or anti-virus issues, but none of them are the problem in this case. I've reduced the solution to a single project and it still happens.
It turns out that the problem was a service my employer recently installed, called AppSense Application Manager Agent, which is designed to limit my access to admin-type features on the PC.
Luckily I still have access to the services control panel, and disabling the service fixed the problem.

VS2010 cannot load msdia100.dll while debugging

While I try to debug a program in VS2010 I get the following message:
I have tried to:
restart the computer
move all files to a new sulotion
debug a different program
debug this program on a different computer
the first two mattered nothing, the lost two worked.
what's wrong with my computer and how do I fix it?
I'm using VS2010 pro, running on win7.
I uploaded the project I tried debugging to google drive, if any one wants to see it.
I started getting this error today. I checked multiple applications, and all failed. Visual Studio itself was crashing. The application was working 2 days ago. I had to copy msdia100.dll from my laptop and the run regsvr32 as described above. When I compared the files, they had the same time stamp and the same size, but the contents were completely different. No idea how the change happened. Everything appears to be working after replacing the DLL.

ClickOnce Publish fails and can't clean up

I am using ClickOnce to publish my application to a virtual server. Sometimes (and we don't know why) the Publishing of the application freezes. It will copy some of the files and then about 20 min later will copy one more and so one. Other times it will work fine.
The problem I have is that when I click Project -> Cancel Build, it will stop the publishing process but it keeps locks on my Debug/app.publish folder. These locks are not released even when I restart Visual Studio. If I don't remove those locks (usually by rebooting my machine), and I try to do another normal compile/build, my whole Visual Studio freezes and hangs my whole machine as it gets stuck on those files locks.
Does anyone know why this would happen? Does anyone know how to remove the file locks on the app.publish folder so I don't have to reboot and get on with my work?
I have had issues where the files it's replacing on the web server get locked or are in use and difficult to overwrite remotely. I usually from time to time have to remote in to the server to delete them and then try to publish again. I've seen this on load balancing servers that replicate and the process has caused issues for me.

VS2010 Test Runner - Unable to start agent process

I can't run any tess in VS2010. Even tests that have run before. I remember setting some services to manual start a few weeks ago, but can't remember what!
Problem: Which agent process / service do I need to start to make this work?
Edit: Even after uninstalling and reinstalling Studio2010 (and taking off the Novell Netware Client which I though may be an issue) it still doesn't work.
Got it! Avira Antivirus (even when 'disabled') seemed to be the culprit. Uninstall of the Antivirus made everything work again.
I'm using VS2015, I was experiencing the exact same error as the original poster (OP). My solution turned out to be simply turning on the add-on's within Internet Explorer so that I could start recording proper tests of my webapp. There were 3 or 4 add-on's that I simply had to enable. After I did that, this error "Unable to start agent process" never came back.

why does windows installer start up everytime i start up visual basic 6

it starts up windows installer with random applications on my machine . . after i click cancel a few times, it loads vb6 fine.
any ideas why this is happening?
To stop this behavior:
Start VB6
Open the Add-Ins dialog
Uncheck the "Visual Component Manager" Add-In
Source:
After VS2010, SP1, VB6 launches VS2010 installer
This is what a Windows Installer repair looks like. It means that something is broken in one of the installed products on your system. Ideally it's a one-off repair so you might be better off letting it runs its course and do the repair, except of course if it asks for a install CD that you don't have.
The Windows event log (Application) will have MsiInstaller entries saying what product and component has the problem.
It's possible a previous installation has not completed correctly.
Use the utility at the following link to remove any rogue installations files:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301 (broken link Aug.2017, leaving URL for "historical purposes").
As PhilDW has pointed out this is a Windows Installer Self-Repair issue, and can often be resolved by allowing the self-repair to complete once. At other times the problem persists and it should be fixed by other means. Even when the self-repair completes and the problem goes away, it can still resurface once you launch the conflicting application. Windows Installer is not easy to deal with.
In your particular case you might be able to get away with a "workaround" rather than a fix. By locating the main VB6 EXE file on disk (in its main installation directory) and manually creating a shortcut to it on your desktop, you might be able to successfully launch VB6 via this new shortcut without the self-repair kicking in. It might be worth a try.
This shortcut trick will not remove the underlying problem, but might help to "bypass it". Just for the record: the reason this might work is that the new, manually created shortcut is not "advertised" and will not trigger a key-path check of the installed product when launched. This is Windows Installer's way to verify that a product is correctly installed. Note that even if the workaround works, self-repair might still result during application use because of faulty COM data being detected (which is very likely the cause of the whole problem you are seeing, but give the manually created shortcut a try).
There is a rather comprehensive "article" on self-repair here: How can I determine what causes repeated Windows Installer self-repair? which might help to track down the cause of the self-repair kicking off in the first place, but fixing it can be a rather complicated process (so try the workaround first). It is a long article because there are so many different ways self-repair can occur. The common denominator is that different installers on your system are fighting over a shared setting that they keep updating with their own values on each application launch in an endless loop. The last application to launch will overwrite the registry or file system with its own setting.
This worked for me, for VS2010 RC:
"Please wait while windows configures Microsoft Visual studio 2010 Ultimate."
THe work around that fixes the issue for me was to run the following via the admin cmd prompt.
Md "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\common7\IDE\FromGAC"
from http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-SG/vsprereleaseannouncements/thread/572a0f8a-16b0-4e1d-b581-16be36a9b564
This was also happned to me.
Whenever i tried to open vb6, it started windows installer to configure "Autocad".
Autocad had not broken. and it was working fine.
I tried removing and reinstalling Windows Installer, But it did not solved the issue.
Then i installed Microsoft's "Windows Installer Clean Up Utility 2" from given link.
Using this utility i removed the autocad from "Windows Installers" Database.
After that VB6 never started installer again.
Keep in mind 'removing any entry from installer's database may be risky, but i had no choice. So do it on your own risk.
Download "Windows Installer Clean Up Utility 2" (this is a deprecated, unsupported and unsafe tool to use - Aug.2017. I will leave the link in for "historical purposes", don't use it).

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