My installation of Visual Studio was fine previously, but has started acting weird lately. Some of the symptoms include
Visual Studio randomly hangs or crashes
Visual Studio won't start
Intellisense disappears sometimes
Plugins are not working, or are failing to start
I can't install or uninstall tools
I can't connect to source control anymore
Certain known good project types fail to load properly
Known file types don't have syntax highlighting anymore
I can't add files to a solution because the option is greyed out
I can't add, remove, or update files to a solution due to an error
I can't add or remove projects to a solution due to an error
I can't open a solution due to an error
The debugger cannot launch, or attach to processes
I can't find any templates when I try to add a new item
I can't copy/paste due to an error
A DLL required by Visual Studio is missing or corrupt
Menus are suddenly empty
Something that I know should normally work, now does not work
How can I fix this?
(This question is meant to be a canonical close dupe for these types of questions)
Visual Studio is pretty reliable, and most of us using it aren't experiencing the issues you are. It's a pretty large and complex suite of components, though, which means problems are bound to occur.
First: Restart Visual Studio and, if that fails, restart your computer
The majority of small issues are fixed by restarting Visual Studio. Some of the ones involving connectivity or services can be fixed by restarting your computer.
If this doesn't fix your problem
There's no way to guarantee that something bad won't happen to a particular installation of Visual Studio. The ways a large, complex application can become misconfigured or damaged are too varied to mention.
The effort it would take to diagnose and track down every possible cause is great. Ain't nobody got time for that. The one reliable solution—which works almost every time it's tried—is:
Reinstall Visual Studio.
Go ahead, rest your eyes for a little bit. Come back when you've come to terms with this sad fact.
…
Resigned? Okay. We're going to go through the steps to fix your problem, starting with the lowest impact, but probably least likely to work, one first. While you are attempting to fix this, keep notes! Mentally, or write them down. If you get to the last step, you'll need them.
First, let's go the easiest route and return Visual Studio to its original state. We can do this by removing all extensions and by resetting all settings.
Open the "Extensions and Updates" dialog. If you can't find it, type that into the quick launch. If you can't find that, try ctrl-q. For each installed extension, highlight it and click the Uninstall button.
Next, let's reset those settings. Make sure you export them first!
From the docs:
To export your settings
1. On the menu bar, choose Tools, Import and Export Settings. Choose the Export selected environment settings option button, and then
choose the Next button.
2. Make sure that the check boxes for the kinds of settings that you want to export are selected and all other check boxes are cleared, and
then choose the Next button.
3. (Optional) Name your settings file, enter a different path where it should be saved, or both. By default, setting files are named
Currentsettings.vssettings and saved to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Visual
Studio 2015\Settings.
4. Choose the Finish button.
You can import them later from the same location. Now, once you've saved your settings, go back and reset them.
Tools -> Import and Export Settings... -> Reset all settings
Having reset everything, try to repro your issue. Still breaking?
Heck.
There's no doubt that you need to reinstall. Let's go the easiest route and do a repair. Do the following:
Go to Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features
Select Microsoft Visual Studio [whatever edition] [whatever year]
Click "Change"
Click "Repair"
After you've done this, try to repro your issue. Did it still happen?
Damnit, sorry.
If you want to try a different way, you may be able to do an "overlay" reinstall. Simply run the installer directly and select "install" (if this option is available to you). You can use your original media, but I'd strongly suggest you re-download the installer. This will overlay a new version over the old, without messing up your settings. After reinstalling, try to repro. Did it?
Aw hell. Here we go.
You need to try uninstalling/reinstalling. First, though, you might want to export your settings. You should have done this for step one of this answer, but if you didn't, go back and follow the instructions to do it now.
After saving them, repeat steps 1 and 2 (from the repair instructions) and this time select "Uninstall" instead of "Change". If your issue has to do with an external component, search for it in the list of other installed applications and uninstall it as well. If you're paranoid, uninstall everything Visual Studio related. They may be out to destroy you.
Now, reinstall Visual Studio. If you've found yourself at this point, you're in deep, so don't risk installing from your original media. Download a fresh, fully updated copy from where you originally got it. For example, if you got Visual Studio via your MSDN subscription, go there and download the ISO.
Now, having reinstalled everything, try to repro. Did it happen again?
F##&ing s#!t.
Now is the time to create a bug report. Go to Connect
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/LoadSubmitFeedbackForm
Provide as much information as possible. You need to give them all the info they ask for in the form, plus details about the bug, how to repro it, and what you did to try and fix it. Remember those notes I told you to write down? Bust them out now. I'd strongly recommend you mark your issue public, as it may be found and commented on by others with your problem.
Within a day you'll get a response. They will probably want you to turn on Visual Studio logging and repro the issue. I won't tell you how to do this here, as they will give you exact instructions for the version of Visual Studio you are running. Follow them and reply as soon as you can.
There will be one of three outcomes from this process:
They will tell you that you're doing it wrong
They will discover an outside actor causing the issue
They will discover a bug
For #1, stop doing that, and you're done. For #2, they'll probably tell you to uninstall the bad actor (e.g., remove a plugin) and go tell the people responsible about the bug (don't slack--do it). For #3, they'll triage the bug and it will be fixed sometime later. It's likely they will suggest workarounds that will at least get you moving again, if it's a true bug.
And that's it. Now, go forth and reinstall Visual Studio!
I'm very new to Visual Studio and Universal Windows Apps Development. As a part of the course, I have this codeSHOW project provided.
I've cloned it successfully in VS 2015, but I can't run the project using the .sln file. Error:
Here's the error log: http://pastebin.com/c012Bba4
I have no clue how to fix it, and the issues on github go unanswered so I can't expect much from there.
This is an known issue in Visual Studio 2015.
The problem is with files with the exact same name under different folders in a Shared project, which in your case is "resources.resjson".
The only workarounds are either to make the file names unique and if that is not an option, to duplicate the files in the projects instead of sharing them out of the Shared project.
This is a VS2015 specific bug, the solution loads just fine on VS2013. You can get some insight into what is going wrong. First note that your got two message boxes that announced this error. Barely visible in your screenshot.
The failure.txt file gives more hints, you can see the stack traces of the two AggregateException that are raised when the solution is loaded. You'll see that two tasks are trying to load the same resources.resjon project item. Not correct of course, quacks like a standard concurrency bug.
Nothing actually goes wrong, Visual Studio can handle the exception and declares it "Recoverable", the projects are still loaded correctly. And compile just fine. Only other thing you need is the Bing Maps SDK, you can download the correct version here.
If you have VS2013 then prefer that version, it doesn't have this bug and loads the solution without any complaint. And minimizes the odds that you'll run into other quirky problems. Given the current stability of VS2015, not great, it is the best way to avoid losing time. Otherwise just ignore the mishap and close the message boxes, some future Update will no doubt fix the bug. You can report it at connect.microsoft.com if you wish. Not actually necessary I think, it looks like VS is phoning home.
All my project (from the same solution) references are marked with a yellow triangle. The projects are all set to the same .NET version (4.5.1). The error log says:
The project 'CommonLibrary' cannot be referenced.
A way to temporarily fix the issue is to either:
Remove and re-add the references
Right click and choose Add Service Reference and immediatelly cancel.
However, the triangles come back every time I start the solution.
The solution is build successfully regardless or the issue. The real issue is that Resharper acts like the references don't exist.
Another thing that might be relevant is that I have 2 projects that are supposed to be unloaded but they become active every time I load the solution.
Any idea what to do with the issue?
I had similar issues and it usually comes down to the Target Framework (Project>Properties>Application). I was working on a solution using .NET 4.6 and for some reason the default framework for new projects have a different target (in my case it was 4.5.2). So make sure you check all your project at the very least have the same target framework.
Do the following:
In vs choose: tools->options->resharper->options-> general-> click the clear caches button.
then close all your opened tabs and shut down vs2013.
finally, start vs2013 again.
Let me know if that worked for you.
Try switching to managed compatibility mode in VS2013
you can do that by going to tools->options..->General tab and check the Use managed compatibility mode
I had the same thing happen but didn't suspect the 24 warnings I was getting was related to this error: Error 1 Unable to locate the .Net framework aspnet_merge.exe tool on path '~\Photo Archive\Main\etc\tools'. You need to set the msbuild property 'AspnetMergeToolPath' to the folder containing this tool. ODOT.PhotoArchive.Web
Trying to set the MS build property led to a lot of research just to find out WHICH property to set. So, Agent Ransack to the rescue -- searched my drive for the most recent version of the tool and copied it to the directory Visual Studio was complaining about.
Rebuilt the project with the idea of clearing the error but then the 24 warnings also disappeared.
FYI -- this is an MVC project which will replace a classic asp project. This might be peculiar to MVC projects.
At any rate, there was a lot of chasing snipes before this was finally tried. So, where this is happening, try handling any errors no matter how remote the possibility is they're related to the issue.
I had the same problem as you can see in this picture.
Its reason was the hidden folder. I had hidden the folder containing the project files. I got rid of this problem by unchecking the hidden attribute of the root folder containing the project files and restarting the visual studio.
Check it once, you might have checked the folder to be hidden.
I have a Visual Studio 2013 solution that is under source control (TFS, Visual Studio Online). It is mapped to a local workspace, I have checked out some files (e.g. web.config, global.asax).
When I try to save any changes to files I get a 'Save File As' dialog, and if I hit Save it warns me the file already exists (say, web.config), and asks me if I want to replace it. If I hit Yes I get I get an error dialog saying 'the process cannot access the file '....\wyfvmjia.p1p~' because it is used by another process. I have no idea what this file is or how it is related to the file (web.config) I am trying to save.
This is infuriating, any help would be greatly appreciated!
EDIT 1:
It looks like the Visual Studio process (devenv.exe) is creating and deleting random temporary files in the same folder (e.g. wyfvmjia.p1p~) and is causing a 'sharing violation' on those files (I used a sys internals utility to monitor the folder) when I am trying to save let's say web.config.
EDIT 2:
This seems to suggest in one of the comments that VS2013 creates a copy of a file and then replaces the original when trying to save a file in your project. This would explain why I see temporary files getting created and deleted. It's odd I get the 'Save File As' dialog though. It looks like some other process (antivirus?) gets hold of the temporary file before VS can do something with it?
EDIT 3:
I created a console application project with only a program.cs file and the same is happening. This may be a problem with Antivirus software interfering with the VS2013 'copy-replace' feature.
EDIT 4:
Changed title. Still have not been able to find a solution.
EDIT 5:
See the accepted answer. Apologies for not getting back earlier.
For me it was Google Drive.
Once I've closed it, I was able to save the file.
Try running Visual Studio as Administrator.
Extensions might be the problem. Or you could be opening some readonly files.
It's worth to mention that some of the extensions can turn any file you create in to a readonly file, and this would be the same result that you're facing.
So first, disable all extensions, and check for the little icon near the files's name (in the tab) that indicates a readonly file.
It turns out this was caused by disk encryption software. Disabling the disk encryption software services each time after starting VS2013 solves the problem. I did not have this problem with earlier versions of Visual Studio, presumably because of the new copy-replace cycle adopted by VS2013 mentioned in EDIT 2 in my original question.
Apologies for not coming back to comment and answer my original question, I completely forgot about it.
I had the same problem and it was caused by "Backup and Sync from Google". After I’ve closed it everything went back to normal.
I had this problem as well. It went away once I uninstalled VS 2013 and installed VS 2012 instead. Good enough for me.
I had the exact problem on a company computer. I had to uninstall VS 2013 RC2 and reinstall vs2013 ultimate. Then I had to go through the update process for update 1. I believe it must by the Symantec progressive scan along with the VS 2013 upgrade handling of files. I guess the moral of the story, if I can be so cliché is "If it aint broke don't fix it".
I had the same issue and created a bug on Connect. Let's hope this gets fixed
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/860265/unable-to-save-files-in-vs-2013-update-2-rc2
I got mine fixed by making a copy of all the files with git clone then deleting all old files and pasting the copied versions over it. Not sure how this fixed permissions or an antivirus denying permission but it did
martijn_himself sounds correct, problem could be because of Disk Encryption Software. This problem started om my PC when i changed settings (domain etc) on Disk Encryption Software. and a simple "Update 2" for VS2013 fixed this issue.
I had the same problem with only one html file in a project. For me it seems to have something to do with VPN that I was using to upload this html file to CRM system. Whenever it was on it seemed to "block" the file somehow. When I closed the window where I was uploading the html file I can save without any issues.
I tried all the suggestions here but none worked. Then, with the modified file open in Visual Studio, I navigated to the file on disk and deleted it. Then clicked build and the save file dialog no longer popped up. I was able to build and check in.
For me, it was Windows' Controlled Folder Access, even though I didn't get the standard warning/error. In "Allow an app through...", I had to add
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\WDExpress.exe
(Backup and Sync from Google) when I close it The problem vanished
Recently I started to get this message randomly:
Metadata file '...\Release\project.dll' could not be found in Visual Studio
I have a solution with several projects in it. The current build mode is Debug and all projects' configurations are set to Debug. But when I try to run the main project - sometimes it gives me a few errors, all of which are "Metadata file '...\Release\projectX.dll' could not be found" - and, look, it says about RELEASE folder, though current mode is Debug. Why? I tried to search for reference to "Release\projectX.dll" inside all solution files, and I found one in ResolveAssemblyReference.cache file.
I made a good search over the Internet and found a few people with a similar problem, but there was no solution, or at least no working solution.
I tried to delete references to those projects and read them, but in some time I start getting these errors again.
It seems like a bug. Why does it search for referenced projects in Release folders when I always use Debug mode?
PS. For those who met this problem: I couldn't solve it in an easy way. It disappeared only after I reinstalled Windows :(
Everyone is correct...try everything...(in order of a little to a lot of time wasted)
Do you have bad code? Fix that first.
Clean Solution & Restart Visual Studio
Remove / Add References
Check your build order w/ larger projects and verify
Manually rebuild sub-projects
Manually copy dlls between projects into associated bin folders
Go get some coffee, play some pinball and come back tomorrow...you may think of something else in the meanwhile.
I had the exact same problem. Big visual studio solution with 50+ projects.
All references were added as projects.
Project build order was correct (right click on project and select build order).
However when building some of the higher level projects the "root" project they depended on were not built.
The problem was that these projects were not selected to build under the current configuration (don't know how this happened).
To check this select "Configuration Manager" (Build menu) e check if the problematic projects are set to build.
When you say you deleted references to those projects and re-added them, how did you re-add them, exactly? Did you use the "Browse" tab in the "Add Reference" dialog in Visual Studio? Or, did you use the "Projects" tab (which lists neighboring projects in your solution)?
Edit: If you use the "Browse" tab, and manually add the reference to your .dll that is located in the /Release folder, then Visual Studio will always look for the .dll in that location, regardless of what mode you're currently in (Debug or Release).
If you removed the actual .dll file from the Release folder (either manually or by doing "Clean Solution"), then your reference will break because the .dll does not exist.
I'd suggest removing the reference to ProjectX.dll, and add it in again--but this time, use the "Projects" tab in the "Add Reference" dialog. When you add a reference this way, Visual Studio knows where to get the appropriate .dll. If you're in Debug mode, it will get it from the /Debug folder. If in Release mode, the /Release folder. Your build error should go away, and you also will no longer be (improperly) referencing a Release .dll while in Debug mode.
Well, my answer is not just the summary of all the solutions, but it offers more than that.
Section (1):
In general solutions:
I had 4 errors of this kind (‘metadata file could not be found’) along with 1 error saying 'Source File Could Not Be Opened (‘Unspecified error ‘)'.
I tried to get rid of ‘metadata file could not be found’ error. For that, I read many posts, blogs etc and found these solutions may be effective (summarizing them over here):
Restart VS and try building again.
Go to 'Solution Explorer'. Right click on Solution. Go to Properties. Go to 'Configuration Manager'. Check if the checkboxes under 'Build' are checked or not. If any or all of them are unchecked, then check them and try building again.
If the above solution(s) do not work, then follow sequence mentioned in step 2 above, and even if all the checkboxes are checked, uncheck them, check again and try to build again.
Build Order and Project Dependencies:
Go to 'Solution Explorer'. Right click on Solution. Go to 'Project Dependencies...'. You will see 2 tabs: 'Dependencies' and 'Build Order'. This build order is the one in which solution builds. Check the project dependencies and the build order to verify if some project (say 'project1') which is dependent on other (say 'project2') is trying to build before that one (project2). This might be the cause for the error.
Check the path of the missing .dll:
Check the path of the missing .dll. If the path contains space or any other invalid path character, remove it and try building again.
If this is the cause, then adjust the build order.
Section (2):
My particular case:
I tried all the steps above with various permutations and combinations with restarting VS few times. But, it did not help me.
So, I decided to get rid of other error I was coming across ('Source File Could Not Be Opened (‘Unspecified error ‘)').
I came across a blog:
http://www.anujvarma.com/tfs-errorsource-file-could-not-be-opened-unspecified-error/#comment-1539
I tried the steps mentioned in that blog and I got rid of the error 'Source File Could Not Be Opened (‘Unspecified error ‘)' and surprisingly I got rid of other errors (‘metadata file could not be found’) as well.
Section (3):
Moral of the story:
Try all solutions as mentioned in section (1) above (and any other solutions) for getting rid of the error. If nothing works out, as per the blog mentioned in section (2) above, delete the entries of all source files which are no longer present in the source control and the file system from your .csproj file.
I've had this problem before and the only way I've found to solve it is to run Clean Solution and then restart Visual Studio.
For me it's usually the target framework being off (4.5.2 instead of 4.6) If you fix the target framework of the project to match the target framework of the solution and build, a new .dll will be created.
Re-open Visual Studio as Administrator.
Most of the answares say that you need to remove the libraries of your solution, this is true but when you re-add the libraries the error will be shown again. You need to verify if all the libraries referenced have a compatible .net framework with the .net framework of your solution. Then fix all the errors in your code and rebuild the solution.
Did you check the Configuration manager settings? In the project settings dialog top right corner.
Sometimes it happens that between all the release entries a debug entry comes in.
If so, the auto dependency created by the dependency graph of the solution gets all confused.
I've also seen this error in solutions where I have multiple projects (usually netTiers projects where I've updated one or more of the sub-projects to target the 4.0 framework). It can be problematic to remove. Oftentimes it can be resolved, however, by first fixing all other errors in sub-projects (eg, any missing references), individually rebuilding those sub-projects, then removing/adding back any references to those sub-projects in Visual Studio. Personally, I've had little luck resolving this error by cleaning the solution alone.
We recently ran into this issue after upgrading to Office 2010 from Office 2007 - we had to manually change references in our project to version 14 of the Office Interops we use in some projects.
Hope that helps - took us a few days to figure it out.
In my case it was caused by two things (VS.2012):
1) One of the projects was configured for AnyCPU instead of x86
2) A project that was referenced had somehow the "Build" checkbox unchecked.
Do check your Build | Configuration Manager to get an overview of what is being built and for which platform. Also make sure you check it for both Debug & Release as they may have different settings.
In my case, I had some errors in my code. Visual Studio showed the error you had instead of the actual errors, like syntax errors or unknown class names. Try cleaning the solution and building project after project. This way you will discover the actual errors.
Again, this is just what cause the error for me.
I had this problem and took long while to figure it out. Problem came up when I removed projects from solution and replaced those with nuget packages.
Solution seemed to be fine but the .csproj file still contained those projects multiple times as reference.
Seems that VS does not clean that file appropriately. It was still referencing the removed projects under the hood. When manually removed the references from csproj file all works again! wohoo
This problem is due to pdb files or CodeContracts.
To resolve it:
Clean your output folder and rebuild the solution.
Re-Configure the CodeContracts or disable it for temporary build.
We have that problem quite often, but only with references to C++/CLI projects from C# projects. It's obviously a bug deep down in Visual Studio that Microsoft decided not to fix, because it's 'too complex' and they promised an overhaul of the C++ build system which is now targeted for Visual Studio 2010.
That was some time ago, and maybe the fix even went into Visual Studio 2008; I didn't follow up on it any more. However, our typical workaround was
Switch configuration
Restart Visual Studio
Build the solution
I had the same problem myself.
Visual Studio 2013 only told me that it couldn't reference to it, and it couldn't find the metadata. When I opened my solution (which has multiple projects in it) it said that I was using projects lower than the framework version of one of my projects.
So I switched everything to version 4.5, and it worked again.
I seem to recall having a similar problem a few months ago. I solved it temporarily by copying the referenced DLL to the Release folder, thus satisfying Visual Studio's expectations. Later, I discovered the reference to the Release DLL in my actual code. You should try doing a search through the entire project for \release\project.dll.
Also, I have noticed that Visual Studio unit test projects sometimes put a "DeploymentItem" attribute on each of the test methods pointing to your target DLL, and if you switch between Debug and Release, Visual Studio can get confused if the DLL is no longer in the expected location. In my experience, these attributes can be safely deleted if you didn't put them there yourself as part of a "single deployment" scenario.
I had this problem and it was due to an invalid method in the offending library (dll) that did not return a value, e.g.
public bool DoSomething()
{
//I never bothered putting code here....
}
When I commmented this out everything compiled :)
Sometimes VS2010 switches my configuration from Any CPU to Mixed Platforms. When this happens I get this error message.
To resolve it I switch back to Any CPU:
1. Right click on the solution and select properties.
2. Click on Configuration Properties and then the Configuration Manager... button.
3. Under Active solution platform select Any CPU
I find that this usually occurs to me when i still have a method declaration in an interface, which a class implements, but that i had later removed and had forgotten to remove it from the interface as well. I usually just save the entire solution every 30mins n then just revert back to an earlier version if i cant find the error.
I ended up deleting my references (I had added them properly using the projects tab, and they used to build just fine), hand editing my .csproj files and removing bizarre entries that didn't belong -- and setting my outputs for debug and release, x86 and x64 and any cpu to all be "\bin" -- I built it once, then re-added the reference (again, using the projects tab), and everything started working again for me. Didn't have to restart Visual Studio at all.
For me this was caused by the Build target having been rewritten to not output the dll. Removing this to fall back on the default Build target fixed the issue.
For me was to remove/delete entire .vs folder(that is an invisible one) and then:
- Build
- Rebuild
and done.
in my case i was working on a branch off master. so i checked out master branch, ran a build and then checked out my branch. It fixed the issue. If you already are on master, i suggest you check out previous commit and then build it.
It seems to happen when you checkout a solution with multiple projects that have references between them, and you haven't built it before. If you have references directly to the dlls, instead of referencing the project, you'll get this message.
You should always use the Projects tab in the Add Reference dialog to add a reference to a project in the same solution. This way, VS can know the correct order in which to build the solution
same happened to me today as described by Vidar.
I have a Build error in a Helper Library (which is referenced by other projects) and instead of telling me that there's an error in Helper Library, the compiler comes up with list of MetaFile-not-found type errors. After correcting the Build error in Helper Library, the MetaFile errors gone.
Is there any setting in VS to improve this?
I had the same problem. I noticed that my db context (EF4) that was located in the project dll wasn't recognize for some reason. I deleted it and created another one instead. and that solved it for me.
Had the same problem today.
My application, a Windows Forms applications, accidently had a reference to itself. Weird.
Once removed, the error went away.
The reference got added each time I dragged a user control, located in the Windows Forms project itself, to a form.
I had the same problem. Manually removing and adding the dlls did not help. ClassLibraries did not compile for all the projects and were missing in the ...\bin\Debug folder for the project [because I cleaned solution by mistake]. Since the class library did not compile that means there may be some errors somewhere in one of those sub projects.
Solution: Since my dlls were there for the ...\bin\Release folder, I tried to rebuild on Release mode and found an error on one line in one of the sub projects. Solving the error and rebuilding the solution got rid off the build error.