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I am getting an "Unknown Error" (shown below) alert when I try to launch Visual Studio 2017 Community after successful installation.
UPDATE: After Force uninstall & reinstallation
remove this folder (or similar):
%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_db2a872f
folder name 15.0_db2a872f could be different in your machine eg. 15.0_XXXXXXX
found in the vs startup log that processing of Progression_NativePackage_Component_x86.pkgdef bailed out, indicating an inconsistent extension installation
I only had to rename(if you wan't to back it up)/delete the following file:
privateregistry.bin
or
privateregistry.user.bin
depending on Visual Studio version.
%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_********\privateregistry.bin
%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_********\privateregistry.user.bin
After restarting Visual Studio 2017 you may need to activate Tools or Extensions again.
Please check if the machine has Symantec Workspace Virtualization Agent installed. Removing the product from add\remove programs fixed the unknown error while launching VS 2017.
Here is the detail of the product.
Product code: {785F9A4D-D113-43B3-AA1D-77AD777F0A2F}
Package code: {32DB9767-3EF7-465A-ADF2-7ECFD25ABC12}
Install date: 2015.05.21
Version: 6.4.1266
Publisher: Symantec
I ran it as Admin and it somehow booted up just fine after that. I was getting the same error even after making sure that all packages and SDKs were installed until I ran it as admin.
Basically, just go to the shortcut in Start or to the .exe in the files, then right click it and run as Admin or change it in the properties. Tbh, it seems like a temporary fix and I'd actually like to know the real source of the problem, but for now, I don't have to reinstall and repair over and over.
Same version: Visual Studio Community 2017 installed using the launcher
I have a same problem after update VS 2017 Enterprise to the build 26228.9.
Repair installation doesn't fix anything. Still I got "Unknown error" message immediately after start VS2017.
Fixing is possible by removing this folder:
"C:\Users\USER_NAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_xxxxxxx"
where xxxxxxxx is some hexadecimal number.
BUT AFTER THAT YOU LOSE ALL SETTINGS that you done on your installation of VS 2017 (except product license key appliance).
Sorry that I must say this, but:
Maybe will be better stuck on the VS2015 for now. Because MS still not has really fully functional build of VS for now.
VS 2017 is still ready for first experimenting only and not for real work.
It is same story like a was when VS2015 has been published. (after several days stop working).
I fixed it the same way as niclar by deleting folder 15_.*. It does however appear that renaming privateregistry.bin has same effect with less trouble.
As mentioned by Torbjorn, ReSharper and other Extensions can mess up, however no reinstall required.
Merely go to Tools > Extensions and Updates... > Scroll through list of Installed Extensions > Enable those that should be enabled.
I have a side by side installation with VS2015. After opening and closing VS2015 once, VS2017 ist starting again normally. Strange but helped in my case.
I only needed to delete or rename ApplicationPrivateSettings.lock within C:\users{your username}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_c31ecfb9 folder.
I was experiencing this issue with Visual Studio Professional
when not running as administrator. (It worked Ok as administrator)
I used Niclar's solution of deleting the folders.
I found same issue after installing the extension and removing the folder "C:\Users\USER_NAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_xxxxxxx" solved my problem.
you can rename the Solution Name and reopen the Project it solved for me after repairing the VS Installation
Now I have some big problems with installing Visual Studio Community.
These problems came when I got back to Windows 7 from Win10 (because I had some problems).
When I launched the actual Visual Studio for the first time on Win7, it loaded good, but I didn't have any templates. So I decided to reinstall it.
Uninstall went good, but when I tried to install it again, it just stopped at Microsoft Visual Studio Hub Services or something like that. It just really stopped, when I let it go, the progress bar never moved. Then it also said that it couldn't find it or something similar.
And then the fun starts. I tried to do it several times, same. Then I downloaded the Visual Studio 2013 Community, and it stopped on Build x86. Same like the Hub Services at the 2015 version. I gave up at this moment. But after that, I went angry and removed the all Visual Studio folders in the Program Files.
But later on, I found the Visual Studio 2015 Express for Desktop, I downloaded it and that time it said right at the beginning: A Prerelease version of Visual Studio Community is currently installed. Please uninstall it prior to proceeding with your current installation.
I listened to it, went to Remove and Add Programs thing (don't know what name is it in english) and yeah, there was a version of that Visual Studio I removed. I tried to uninstall it, but it just said something again: The installation source for this product is not available. Make sure that the source exists and that you can access it.. And that's basically all.
So I would like to ask, how to fix this thing. It's because of that movement from Win10 to Win7? Or because of the VS folder deletement in Program Files? Any answers are very welcome!
EDIT: Main problem is that it stops at Microsoft Visual Studio Hub Services, I managed to uninstall the 2015 Community version, but then it stops and just didn't move, the only way was to remove the process to shut down the installing window and cancel the installing.
EDIT 2: Well, kinda shy of my grammar back then, fixed some bigger mistakes.
When Visual studio is installed, several other programs get installed. So when you try to uninstall visual studio, you should uninstall all other bunch of programs which were installed along with actual visual studio(which is a bit burden). It take so much time for me to uninstall all the programs from my computer. So while re installing please make sure you uninstall all the other installed apps also.
[EDIT: you may want to scroll to the bottom for the nuclear option which I wish I'd discovered earlier!]
I've downgraded two computers from Windows 10 to 7, both with VS2015 on them. One worked and the other had its VS2015 break horribly. I also deleted the VS2015 directory and registry data that mentioned VS2015 and all sorts, and I had even more problems than you describe :) I think the difference is that I installed some new things (node.js and TypeScript) under Windows 10, and they inserted things into VS2015 which were no longer properly installed after the downgrade.
Here are my discoveries in a hopefully useful order:
When it hangs, what it's actually doing is trying to display this prompt asking you to supply the path to an installer it couldn't find.
You usually get to see these prompts if you 'Run as Administrator' the (main) installer (rather than letting it obtain Administrator privileges itself). Process Explorer helps shed light on this: if the main installer's window is associated with the child process, then the dialogues are visible. If the root process, they're not.
The prompt relates to old versions of packages that the installer wants to uninstall prior to installing a new one, and for some reason the installer doesn't know how to re-download those packages. It is usually looking under C:\ProgramData\Package Cache for them.
If you aren't seeing the dialogue, you can view logs in C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Local\Temp. Use the 'Details' view and sort this folder by date modified, to help you find the right one. Each sub-installer tends to make a new file so you may have to poke around a bit. Changing dates or file sizes also tell you that it's doing something.
Messages like this tend to be associated with the attempt to show a dialogue:
MSI (s) (24:D8) [13:00:25:033]: SOURCEMGMT: Trying source C:\ProgramData\Package Cache\{388D7468-1CCA-40C8-9F08-4C20E972E922}v14.0.25123\packages\BuildTools_MSBuildResMsi_amd64\.
MSI (s) (24:D8) [13:00:25:033]: Note: 1: 2203 2: C:\ProgramData\Package Cache\{388D7468-1CCA-40C8-9F08-4C20E972E922}v14.0.25123\packages\BuildTools_MSBuildResMsi_amd64\BuildTools_MSBuildResMsi.msi 3: -2147287037
MSI (s) (24:D8) [13:00:25:033]: SOURCEMGMT: Source is invalid due to missing/inaccessible package.
So, what to do about these missing packages?
If you have another computer with a working Visual Studio 2015 installation, you can copy the entirety of Package Cache from there to your bad computer (no need to merge folders that already exist) and that will hopefully catch many of them.
For the rest, I tried a few third-party uninstallers, and Revo Uninstaller helped. Go into its settings and enable 'Show System Components'. Then, whenever you identify a problematic package, you'll usually be able to find it in Revo Uninstaller. If you uninstall it, you'll see the usual prompt (cancel it), and after it fails, Revo's 'Moderate' registry cleanup option does the trick ('Safe' didn't). If you use the Pro version then you can multi-select and use the 'Quick Uninstall' batch option, which isn't quite automated - yes, I'm afraid it will be tedious - but with some patience, you can get through everything.
Identifying the problematic packages is still a manual process, but the good news is that you can cancel many of the prompts during a run of the installer without it aborting, so you can collect a lot of package names as you go. You can also look for patterns in version numbers; for me, a lot of them were 14.0.15123` or something like that.
For me, just one package didn't show up in Revo Uninstaller, and I searched the registry myself and deleted some occurrences. I'm not sure if that or the subsequent install of the new package was what did it, but even that one went away.
So, after all that, I'm pleased to report that Visual Studio 2015 has got through the 'Repair' operation with no further errors. I still need to reboot before I can see if it runs without a hitch...
[EDIT: Nuclear option follows]
It didn't. Many of the standard windows (code editor and error list to name a couple) failed to load with the error "An item with the same key has already been added". On the plus side, at least Visual Studio didn't suddenly exit moments after opening. So that's an improvement and 2-3 days well spent :)
After that:
I found this answer and tried the TotalUninstaller linked therein.
Then I deleted more of the installation where that uninstaller reported it couldn't delete a non-empty directory.
Then I was going to reinstall from scratch, but would you believe it - it gave me Modify/Repair/Uninstall options! So I ran the Uninstall. (Maybe Repair would have worked, who knows?)
Then I reinstalled from scratch.
There was just one more failed uninstall of an old thing (Microsoft Web Deploy), but it didn't even report a warning at the end because of it, and now my Visual Studio finally seems to be intact - fingers crossed! (I may never test that web deploy thing anyway - I mainly use it with Unity. Of course I had to install the Unity tools again.)
So yeah. I have no idea if this works by itself or if you also have to do all the other stuff. If you try it and find out, let us know.
Since you are still seeing Visual Studio in Remove and Add Programs, your environment may not be entirely clean and you will have to first completely remove Visual Studio from the system. This should be independent of whether you're using Windows 7 or 10.
You may need to do further research, but here are some initial pointers:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/Aa983433(v=VS.90).aspx
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/mats/program_install_and_uninstall
Beyond trying those things and then re-attempting the install, please look for any logs generated from the failures. For example, in your %temp% folder.
In my case , I just restart the PC and after it boots up the VISUAL STUDIO 2015 will automatic come back and keep running. I did it with 2 PCs of users and with version Professional. Hope this helps.
Note : Please make sure to close all VS running on your PC before running install 2015 (in my case is VS Pro 2013) and make sure Windows updates have finished running (if they have).
Uninstall any version of visual studio 2015 you already might have installed.
Then, delete this key: I had a similiar issue and found finally as cause entries under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\DevDiv\vs\Servicing\14.0. .
So, I was using Visual Studio 2013, it crashed, and when I restarted it the Search Solution Explorer had stopped functioning correctly:
It fails to find any file if you type in the exact file name
It fails to find any static files e.g. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.
It fails to find any configuration files e.g. Web.config
It seems to still find some files on a partial match, but not all files that you'd expect it to match e.g. if I search for Account I'd expect it to find AccountController.cs and AccountControllerTest.cs but it only finds the latter.
Some further info:
If I start VS 2013 in safe mode Search Solution Explorer works fine without any problems
If I manually disable or uninstall the extensions I'm using and start VS normally, the problem with Search Solution Explorer reappears
Has anyone come across anything similar to this, or got any suggestions of what to try to get Search Solution Explorer working again?
Update
I've had some joy running devenv /ResetSkipPkgs and devenv /ResetSettings. After a I ran those command Search Solution Explorer started working again, and works most of the time now. It still fails occasionally. Sometimes restarting Visual Studio will get it working again, but sometimes it just plain refuses to find certain files that are there.
Update 2
I installed Visual Studio 2013 Update 2, and Search Solution Explorer ran without any problems for just over a week before this problem reappeared. Restarting Visual Studio got Search Solution Explorer working again.
I was able to narrow this down to the extensions I was using, "Productivity Power Tools 2013" seems to break the search feature for me in IIS, so I've disabled it for now. I'm getting a full set of results when searching now.
I came to this conclusion by uninstalling all of my extensions and reinstalling them one by one until the problem reappeared.
A coworker also had some success with this solution, launching DevEnv.exe with /ResetSkipPkgs
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241276.aspx
Update
The problem returned for me after about 30 minutes, no specific cause noted. It was nice while it lasted. Removing all extensions gets me the same behavior as OP, only running in safe mode appears to work.
Deleting the .suo file also seems to fix the problem for a while, and then it comes back. I'm about to resort to a reinstall of vs2012 just to get this search feature back.
Please try to install VS2013 update 2 CTP before reinstalling everything and see if it fix the bug:
Weird that it works in Safe Mode, or that you manage to fix by removing extensiosn and it then re-appears...
but if some of your projects are in solution folders, then there is a known bug, fixed but not released yet apparently:
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/801836/solution-explorer-doesnt-search-files-projects-inside-solution-folders
I have the same issue and confirmed it related to VS2013 Update 2 RC. Uninstall it will fixed this issue.
Wait for GM version of VS 2013 update 2.
I still had this issue both prior to and after installing VS update 3. I should note that it went away after I installed that for a while, and then came back. I suspect (but cannot confirm) that the broken behavior's return coincided with a lockup of my system which necessitated a reboot...
Anyway, I had the Productivity Power Tools installed, and after reading the answers here wondered if it might be complicit, and so I went to disable it and noticed it had a pending update. I went ahead and updated the add-on, and that resolved the issue for me (again). We'll see if it stays fixed.
This may caused by other extensions you have installed in your visual studio. I have some issue, found out Telerik JustTrace caused this issue.
Running devenv /ResetSkipPkgs will fix the problem but, as noted, it will return. For a permanent solution, add this parameter to the target in the exe's properties:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" -ResetSkipPkgs
My Visual Studio began crashing at start-up. In my search for finding a remedy, I found these two suggestions, but neither worked for me:
Launching Visual Studio while running in safe mode, and
Running repair on Visual Studio.
However, I found that if I logged into a different Windows account, Visual Studio was able to run from that account without crashing.
Here is an error code that that I observed in the crash report:
LCID: 1033
Can anyone provide a solution for returning my Visual Studio to working order?
For me it turned out to be the plugin that GitExtensions installed into Visual Studio 2013.
-- UPDATE: try this before uninstalling GitExtensions
#Enceradeira proposed in the comments to uncheck the Show current branch in Visual Studio option. In GitExtensions, you get there via Tools -> Settings -> Appearance:
-- END OF UPDATE
After uninstalling GitExtensions and reinstalling it with all VS plugin unselected my VS runs smoothly again.
I even put together a blog post about this issue because it bugged me so much.
Since you're able to run with another user login, something may be wrong with your local settings, you can try to reset them: devenv /resetsettings in Start menu -> Run.
Warning: this will restore visual studio to default settings.
In my case VS used to crash on a single solution. I resolved the problem by deleting the respective solutions's user file: SolutionName.suo
My colleague recently experienced a problem with Visual Studio 2013 crashing on start-up. Unfortunately, we found that the approach recommended in the answer by #Arun M did not solve the problem:
devenv.exe /ResetSettings
...however, using a different command line argument did:
devenv.exe /ResetUserData
An easy way to run devenv.exe is via the Visual Studio command prompt; on Windows 10, it can be found here:
Start Button => All Apps => Visual Studio 2013 => Visual Studio Tools =>
VS2013 x86 Native Tools Command Prompt
For more about these command line arguments for devenv.exe, see this answer to this related question: How do I truly reset every setting in Visual Studio 2012?. âš In particular, please note the cautionary statement in that answer about the /ResetUserData command line argument!
Try to run VS as administrator. That's necessary in my case.
If coincident to these Visual Studio crashes you are getting "Heap corruption" (Exception code: 0xc0000005) errors in your Windows Application log (Faulting module name: WindowsCodecs.dll), here is something worth checking into: A faulty WIC component within Expression Blend can cause ALL versions of Visual Studio to crash upon launch, as well as cause Internet Explorer to crash upon visiting many, if not most sites. Even though Microsoft distributes this component, they call it a "non-Microsoft component". As such, a Visual Studio reinstall won't fix this,, an OS reinstall over existing Windows installation won't fix this, and a system file integrity check won't detect it.
If my case, the misbehaving codec was "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Expression\Common\Imaging\4.0.360.0\PSDCodec.dll", and simply unregistering this component got my Visual Studio working again from consistent startup launch crashes.
I post this in hopes this solution to one source of Visual Studio crashing might save others from the $500 Microsoft support incident fee and week of downtime this caused me.
I just changed the windows language in the bottom right to "EN", then started as admin. And it worked, interesting..
I had the very strange phenomenon that both Visual Studio 2010 and 2013 on a Windows 7 machine crashed when run in a remote desktop session, started from a Windows 10 pc. Debugging the crash showed a CultureNotFound exception. It was caused by regional settings on the Windows 10 pc, which could not be translated in something understood by Windows 7. I had language English(Belgium) with an Azerty keyboard. I added and selected English(UK) with an Azerty keyboard and the crashes disappeared. No other programs suffered from this.
For me it was being caused by Web Essentials and I was able to resolve by disabling it, restarting VS, enabling it back , restart again. Works now.
I had a crash on startup (or soon after startup, before opening any solution) occurring in git2-msvstfs.dll, caused by placing a 3GB temp file into a directory within my solution. Deleting the file fixed it.
Once I accidentally pressed a random key combination (maybe something like ctrl+', but I didn’t realize I was holding ctrl down so I forgot what keys I hit by the time I realized something bad had happened) that resulted in VS Professional 2017 15.3.5 crashing within half a minute. After relaunching, I found that VS would be interactive for a few seconds before it would crash within half a minute. It was really too fast for me to try to figure out what I had accidentally activated or for me to disable it before VS would crash. Also, it would even crash if I didn’t open any solution, so I figured it was not something that deleting a .vs (per project/solution Solution Explorer/open files state) folder would fix.
To fix, I followed Arun M’s comment and renamed my %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_3f4d04be folder. You will need to adjust the path for the edition/version of VS that is crashing. On my machine, I think 15.0_3f4d04be is Professional and 15.0_0fed6c59 is VS Community Edition. You’ll probably have to guess based on the folder’s modification timestamp which is probably going to reflect the date you last used that edition of VS.
After renaming the versioned dotfolder, VS launched without crashing. It started with default settings but automatically restored some of my settings through the cloud sync stuff after a minute of running and it even remembered my account information so I didn’t need to sign in.
I did not need to rename my %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\VSCommon folder (which Arun M had also suggested).
I had a similar problem, both VS2015 and VS2013 would crash at startup. Tracked it down to an application I installed which put .net 4.7.2 on the system. Once i removed that app, removed .net, and reinstalled .net 4.6, Visual Studio started working again.
I've had a serious issue with my Visual Studio 2008 setup. I receive the ever-so-useful error 'A problem has been encountered while loading the setup components. Canceling setup.' whenever I try to uninstall, reinstall or repair Visual Studio 2008 (team system version). If I can't resolve this issue I have no choice but to completely wipe my computer and start again which will take all day long! I've recently received very strange errors when trying to build projects regarding components running out of memory (despite having ~2gb physical memory free at the time) which has rendered my current VS install useless.
Note I installed VS2005 shell version using the vs_setup.msi file in the SQL Server folder after I had installed VS2008, in order to gain access to the SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services designer in Business Intelligence Development Studio (this is inexplicably unavailable in VS2008).
Does anyone have any solutions to this problem?
P.S.: I know this isn't directly related to programming, however I feel this is appropriate to SO as it is directly related to my ability to program at all!
Note: A colleague found a solution to this problem, hopefully this should help others with this problem.
A colleague found this MS auto-uninstall tool which has successfully uninstalled VS2008 for me and saved me hours of work!!
Hopefully this might be useful to others. Doesn't speak highly of MS's faith in their usual VS maintenance tools that they have to provide this as well!
I had the same error message. For me it was happening because I was trying to run the installer from the DVD rather than running the installer from Add/Remove programs.
In my case, uninstalling from Add&Remove Programs didn't work. Instead, the problem was due to a recently hotfix installed through automatic updates. The hotfix to VS 2008 (in my case) has the number KB952241, so I uninstalled it using Add/Remove Programs checking on the show updates option. After it was unistalled the problem was gone.
I encountered the same problem and found a very easy solution.Go to the following Link:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vs2008/bb968856.aspx
and run VS AutoUninstall tool .This will automatically remove all the components of VS 2008.
Cheers
Sure enough, for me, it was the hotfixes. In Add/Remove Programs, check the "Show Updates" box, and remove ALL of the Hotfixes associated with your version of VS2008. Then try the "Change/Remove" button - it should now proceed without a hitch.
Well, it did for me, anyway... ;-)
I have Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition, and had to remove all updates and Hotfixes:
Update KB972221
Hotfix KB973674
Hotfix KB971091
Reboot, then the following Hotfix appeared, which I then removed as per #riaraos' answer:
Hotfix KB952241
Before the Change/Remove would work!
Hope that helps someone else.
Uninstall hotfixes installed in related to vs2008 and then try again.
It worked for me and hopefully it will for you as well.
Thanks,
Zelalem
Remove the following hot fixes and updates
Update KB972221
Hotfix KB973674
Hotfix KB971091
Restart the PC and try to uninstall now. This worked for me without problems.
Microsoft itself posted a KB article about this, and that article has a service pack that they claim fixes the problem. See below.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959417/
It took a while for the associated update to install itself, but once it did, I was able to run the Visual Studio setup successfully from the Add/Remove Programs control panel.
You should look for the MSI setup logs in the temp directory of your system. They will contain detailed inforamtion about why the setup failed.
I had a similar installation problem with Visual Studio 2008 which I was able to resolve by studying the logs.
I think this sort of question is entirely appropriate to the forum, especially if an easy solution can be found, as would save others hours of pain.
Unfortunately I dont have the solution, but would suggest (if you haven't already)
Run FileMon to see if the
installer is looking for specific
files which are no longer there -
this may give some clues.
Painful, but try uninstalling other apps based upon the VS shell (eg 2005) first.
Thanks, riaraos, uninstalling KB952241 was the solution for me, too. Before doing that I tried to run the installer from "Programs and Features" and from the installation DVD without success. I did not want to completely remove the VS 2008 installation but only add a few components.
Notes on my system:
Windows 7 Beta 1
Visual Studio 2008 SP1
Okay I had the same issues first my VS2008 was acting up so i tried to uninstall it and it didn't work...I read online that using an AutoUninstall by MS will do the trick it did just that , but left a lot of nasty files behind..
So i used "Windows Install Clean Up" and cleaned up more stuff that had to do with VS..
then went back into Add and remove in control panel Removed the KB952241...
then opened up Ccleaner and scanned the registry found a lot of left behind crap from VB2008 removed all that once that was done.
I went ahead and launch the installed back from the CD again and BAM its working.
I did all this without having to restart my PC..
Hope this helps people who are stuck..like i was
In my case, installing visual studio SP1 unbroke the uninstall/repair functionality.
Windows 7 suggested to "Uninstall using recommended settings" after hitting OK in the error message. It solved the problem.
Solution to this is
http://www.dotnetzone.gr/cs/forums/48758/ShowThread.aspx#48758