I had to reinstall Visual Studio 2017 RC because it wasn't getting the locale configurations right after switching non-Unicode program configurations. Also, I have a broken Visual Studio 2015 in my Windows 10 system: It can't uninstall, not even repair.
While reinstalling, I kept getting many install errors from very different packages (from Office365 to NuGet). After many tries, however, I managed to somehow install it without any errors.
But upon trying to open any solution or vcxproj project I am greeted with many different errors involving different packages not loading correctly, such as:
RestoreManagerPackage
VSPackage
Editor package
NuGet package
Funny enough, now VS2017 can't open any file that has been associated with it, opening a 'migration' page in my browser, and notifying that the filetype has been rejected.
I am well aware that errors like this are quite common upon installing the latest versions of Visual Studio (from 2012 to 2015), and the most fittable and common solution would be to remove the directory %localappdata%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_xxxxxx\ComponentModelCache.
But I'm posting this because the error recorded in ActivityLog.xml is something quite different, involving I/O errors and other processes using other files. Also, I've tested the former solution and hasn't worked at all.
I was thinking that the fact that VS2015 is still installed (and broken) might be affecting VS2017RC in some way.
Here's the ActivityLog.xml file
I found this very strange because this error happened after a fresh restart.
Also, I've tried to return to a restore point that was created shortly after the first install of VS2017 RC, but the errors persist.
Update: Reinstalling all VC++ Redistributables didn't work.
I have recently installed Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition on my laptop.
Since the time of installation I have been facing a few issues.
I was not able to even access the New Project option itself.
Some of the times I will be able to access it however, sometimes it does not even allow me to access a single file of my solution in the startup itself it gives me an error.
I have attached a set of five screenshots in this query. There is some blank space after users path, I removed an extra folder name(username) from the path so dont get confused with that.
The detail of all the screenshots are as follows:
1) This is the image I get when I launch the Visual Studio on my laptop.
2) Once I click 'NO' option on the first dialog box I get a new one stating an error with the source code.
3) Once that is done, I move onto Solution Explorer to access the solution and I get this log.
4) When I try to access the tools tab to check for options I get this error message.
5) I had even tried to create a new project and the following error provided in this screenshot would appear.
I am not able to understand where I could have gone wrong or what happened that has corrupted the application to this extent. Is it an installation issue or are there some bugs in this version of Visual Studio, if there are any I would be more than happy to move to previous versions as I was a lot happier with them than this one.
If someone would help on this concern I would be really thankful.
Regards,
Harrisson
First, I went ahead and uninstalled the current version of Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 from my system. Then, I searched and removed the data from the temporary files related to MS VS 2015 from the following paths:
C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio
C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio
Once this had been done, I went ahead and installed Visual Studio 2015. After installation, I installed the additional support directories for Visual C++. You can do the same for the platform you wish to work on.
Then I installed updates from the following link:
https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/news/releasenotes/vs2015-update3-vs
Once I started the solution it worked perfectly fine after that with no errors.
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. .
I'm having this error pop up once I start Visual Studio professional 2013 with update 3.
I don't know whats going on and also when I created a web form and try to put items from the toolbox into a table in my code it doesn't let me. the items are dim and can't select them any more. before I would make a table and try to add Labels, textbox, etc and it wasn't a problem.
Visual Studio 2013 Update 4
Tools -> Extensions and Updates
Disabled "Release Management for Visual Studio 2013 v2.1".
That worked for me.
I got the same issue today, but the error message should be giving you some guidance.
Take a look at mine, it tells me to check the "ActivityLog.xml" for more information.
After looking at the entry my error showed me that it ocured the evening before around 5:30pm and I know I was installing the Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 at this time. So it seems I had a problem with my Update installation.
(Sorry maybe someone can school me on how to properly load an image for viewing)
So I realized my problem was an install issue I created, yours might be an add-on or something similar that you just updated your Visual Studio with that corrupted your VS.
So a little more researching and asking some buddies at work and we tried doing this step in another SO article, which should have the same effect of fixing our package loading problem also.
the Provider package did not load.
After running the steps listed there my Visual Studio started up without any obvious issue.
Hope this helps.
Open ActivityLog.xml in a viewer (I've used Microsoft Edge) and you'll find the error. VSPackage is the "Developer Analytics Tools" extension for me.
The error is gone after uninstalling that package. You can obtain the package and attempt to reinstall from the Developer Analytics Tools page in the Visual Studio Gallery.
I uninstalled and reinstalled Visual Studio and the problem went away for a little bit. It eventually came back complaining about different packages.
Then I noticed my home directory was encrypted. I decrypted the directory and the problem went away.
If it is not an encryption issue, I'd try just uninstalling and reinstalling VS 2013.
Message could be shown in case of "Path" environment variable longer than 2048 characters. In that case, system doesn't work proply with system paths like %windir%.
If it's your case, shorten "Path" environment variable and everything works again.
When I start visual studio express 2012 for web I get this error in the package manager console.
Cannot load Windows PowerShell snap-in Microsoft.PowerShell.Core because of the following
error: Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions
property for more information.
Loader Exceptions:
Exception of type 'System.OutOfMemoryException' was thrown.
I don't remember adding anything new to visual studio. I searched other related problems but they don't work for me.
I tried repairing visual studio. I also tried re-installing visual studio which temporarily removed the problem but it is back again.
Anyone has a solution?
I finally made it work. I suspected it is something from windows update that messed up with my VS since I didn't really add anything to VS. I am not sure which updates to remove so I just uninstalled all the windows update that starts in a certain date. Here are the actual steps that I did:
What I did is uninstalled visual studio 2012 express for web following this tutorial.
And then uninstalled windows updates starting from the date I believe the error started appearing.
After I used CCleaner to clean my registry. Had to run it 2 times to just to make sure it is clean. I'm not sure if this actually helps. I just heard from my friend that uninstalling applications sometime leaves registry keys behind.
Finally, I installed visual studio again. Package manager is back to normal.
Restarted my laptop and it is still working. So I guess it is solved.
I think System Restore would do solve this instead of doing all this steps. But system restore was not an option for .