I had Productivity Power Tools (PPT) installed on my Visual Studio 2012 for quite some time and everything was working well. Suddenly, it stopped working and I noticed it got disabled under Extensions.
I cannot enable it (the Enable button is grayed out), only uninstall, but even uninstalling it and re-installing it didn't do the trick!
I also installed VS 2013 Community (the new full free version) and installed PPT on it and the situation is exactly the same.
Check it!
Tools - Options - Environment - Extension Manager - Load per user extensions...
Worked for me.
After researching this issue inside out (and vise versa), I have finally found out the reason for the mess described in the question here (at least for my specific case):
It appeared that I had a few versions of Visual Studio installed on my PC, which is obviously a very unhealthy situation to have. In my case, the only symptom for this kind of "sick" diversity that I have noticed was the problem with the extension. And a good thing that happened...
I just uninstalled ALL the versions I had installed on my PC and re-installed only the version (one of them) I wanted to continue working with (in my case, VS2013 Community).
I re-installed all the desired extensions, including of course the Productivity Power Tools, and everything is working just fine.
Of course, rebooting the system between installs wouldn't hurt...
After all, I am talking about a Windows-based PC. ;-)
I'm having trouble installing Visual Studio 2012. When I run the installer I get the message:
Microsoft .NET Framework required for Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2012 setup
The first time I got this message, I clicked to install. It loaded some stuff but it didn't look like it installed anything. I ran the installer for VS 2012 again and I get the same message but now without any buttons to click on. Is there any solution to this?
What happened before
I had VS 2012 already up and working. I left it alone for quite a while until I decided I wanted to do some programming again. Starting the application resulted suddenly in an error:
Cannot find one or more components. Please reinstall the application.
After searching for a couple of hours I couldn't resolve the problem so I did as it asked and reinstalled VS, but I got the same error again. Then I tried to remove every single application VS installs as indicated by this list and any program that had a similar name. I also removed all .NET versions and C++ redistributables. Now I can't install VS anymore and some games and gadgets are now broken.
And I always, always, always forget the existence of system restore. I doubt my oldest system restore is old enough. This is going to be my last resort.
What I tried
Search for a .NET installation in the control panel, it's not present after clicking the install button on the prompt of the VS 2012 installer.
Reinstall .NET 4.5 using this installer. It installs correctly, but the problem persists.
Turning .NET 3.5.1 off from windows features and install it manually. This fails for an unknown reason (error code -2145124329, which seems undefined). Just turning it off doesn't work either.
I'm trying to install Visual Studio 2005 on a Windows 7 box but am repeatedly getting the same error. When I run the installer it starts to run then pops up with a message saying:
"A problem has been encountered while loading the setup components. Canceling setup."
Various suggestions has said that maybe the install is corrupted so I downloaded a fresh copy of the ISO from MSDN today, same issue. Another suggestion is that installing from the ISO may be the issue so I extracted the contents of the ISO to a folder on my HDD, same issue. I have also tried running the files as administrator and in XP compatability mode, same issue.
Searching for this issue the most common responses I've found have been about installing SP1, however I cannot get the base product to install and therefore cannot apply SP1.
Does anyone have any further suggestions as to what I can do to fix this issue and get VS2005 installed? If anyone wants any log files of any variety I am happy to supply so long as you tell me where to look as I'm not sure.
As for why I am using VS2005 and not a newer product, it is required for the ongoing support and maintenance of some older applications we manage. These cannot be easily migrated to a newer version of Visual Studio without some considerable investment of time and that would probably be longer than the time it will take to develop newer, replacement applications (which is currently in progress). Until the new applications are available though we need to maintain an environment to use.
Did you try running setup.exe in compatibility mode with Windows XP? Some discussion here on how to do this.
Another alternative since you alluded to having an MSDN subscription. Download Windows XP and install it into a VM. (If HyperV isn't already in installed with your Win7, you can add it from Control Panel->Programs&Features->Turn Windows Features on/off). Then install VS2005 from there.
Is it possible to install "Windows Phone Developer Tools RTW" on a machine without installing Visual Studio and Expression Blend?
The reason I am asking is that I want to install it on a build server.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=04704acf-a63a-4f97-952c-8b51b34b00ce&displaylang=en
You can download and install the tools and then uninstall any options you don't require. Such as VS2010Express & Blend.
Unfortunately there isn't a better solution available at the moment.
Yes, that's exactly why downloads like the one you referenced exist - build servers, production servers have to build/run without Visual Studio.
Do you have specific needs here? I see the q is tagged for Windows Phone.
Online info about the Windows Phone developer tools seems to indicate that it's currently a bit of a work in progress. Don't see any obvious way to put this standalone on a build machine.
I'm having a problem on my TeamCity CI build server where during compilation I get the following error:
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets(2342, 9): error MSB3086: Task could not find "AL.exe" using the SdkToolsPath "" or the registry key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A". Make sure the SdkToolsPath is set and the tool exists in the correct processor specific location under the SdkToolsPath and that the Microsoft Windows SDK is installed
I've found similar reports from a year ago when people were upgrading to .NET 3.5, for example this one. In that case, installing the latest SDK solved the issue, however I have already installed the latest SDK (Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4) on my build server. The MSBuild tools are all there on the server, in a folder called
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319
and AL.exe exists in
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Bin\NETFX 4.0 Tools
However the registry key mentioned in the error message does not exist. So, it seems like there is something wrong with the installation/configuration of MSBuild. This error only happens for projects that have embedded resources, which require AL.exe.
As you have install the latest SDK (I'm assuming that's v7.1)
Go to "Microsoft Windows SDK v7.1" from the Start menu
Select "Windows SDK 7.1 Command Prompt" and enter
cd Setup
WindowsSdkVer -version:v7.1
This will tell msbuild to use that version of the tools without needing to do any scary registry editing.
Even though the question is quite old but it still appears in the top of google search results so I decided to post my solution as well. I have trapped into same issue while during TeamCity setup on Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10 Pro.
I have installed Microsoft Build Tools 2015 and Windows 10 SDK (Only tools for .NET 4.6.2) and got the error from question.
The missing puzzle was to set environment variable: TargetFrameworkSDKToolsDirectory=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v10.0A\bin\NETFX 4.6.2 Tools.
After setting environment variable MSBuild was able to resolve all needed tools including AL.exe and build succeeded.
Please let me know if same can be achieved by setting values in registry, but otherwise environment variables also works very well in this case and no installation of VS is needed.
You also need to apply the following registry fix to update msbuild to point to the V7.1 sdk values.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\4.0]
"MSBuildToolsPath"="C:\\WINDOWS\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v4.0.30319\\"
"MSBuildToolsRoot"="C:\\WINDOWS\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\"
"FrameworkSDKRoot"="$(Registry:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Microsoft SDKs\\Windows\\v7.1#InstallationFolder)"
"MSBuildRuntimeVersion"="4.0.30319"
"SDK40ToolsPath"="$(Registry:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Microsoft SDKs\\Windows\\v7.1\\WinSDK-NetFx40Tools-x86#InstallationFolder)"
"SDK35ToolsPath"="$(Registry:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Microsoft SDKs\\Windows\\v7.1\\WinSDKNetFx35Tools#InstallationFolder)"
"MSBuildToolsPath32"="$(Registry:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\MSBuild\\ToolsVersions\\4.0#MSBuildToolsPath)"
I had the same problem there, here's my simple answer to this.
After you have installed the Microsoft Windows SDK 7.1 on the TeamCity Server.
In Regedit Change this key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSBuild\ToolsVersions\4.0\SDK40ToolsPath
to
$(Registry:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\WinSDK-NetFx40Tools-x86#InstallationFolder)
Follow the below steps. This worked perfectly to me. Saved my time.
1- Right-click the My Computer icon and choose Properties, or in Windows Control Panel, choose System.
2- Choose Advanced system settings.
3- On the Advanced tab, click Environment Variables.
4- Click New to create a new environment variable under User variable section.
5- Variable name: TargetFrameworkSDKToolsDirectory
6- Variable value: TargetFrameworkSDKToolsDirectory=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v10.0A\bin\NETFX 4.6.2 Tools
Variable value depends on your SDK installation path.
7- Click OK and Save all windows.
8- Restart Visual Studio.
I have a simple, effective fix.
The problem seems to be that the tools version delivered with Visual Studio is version 7.0A, while the version delivered with the Windows SDK is version 7.1. That's all very well, but MSBuild.exe is still looking for the version 7.0A registry keys, which don't exist. This has to be a bug!
Looking in my registry, all the information for V6.0 and V7.1 is present and correct. So my solution is simple. I created a registry link that makes an alias of the 7.1 keys.
It's not possible to create registry links using the built-in tools, so I downloaded a little utility called 'regln' from here.
C:>regln-x86.exe "\Registry\Machine\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A" "\Registry
\Machine\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1"
Job done. MSBuild now works perfectly on the TeamCity server.
Add a system env variable TargetFrameworkSDKToolsDirectory
like this:
TargetFrameworkSDKToolsDirectory=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v10.0A\bin\NETFX 4.6.2 Tools
restart VS
Ran into the same issue setting up a new build server on Windows 10.
Found and installed the latest (at the time) Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4 and that solved the problem.
We recently had this problem trying to get our .Net 4.0 builds working. We found that the location of al.exe had changed between where the original MSBuild that came with .Net 4.0 looks, and the Visual Studio SDK for .Net 4.0 (which was released later).
Since the only standalone installation of the SDK tools available is the one we had already installed without success (the one you mentioned), the only solution we could think of was to install Visual Studio on the build agents. We put Visual Studio 2010 Express (to keep the installation as lightweight as possible) on there and the problem went away. Not a pretty solution, but it did work - installing VS2010 also installs the SDK tools of the specific version that MSBuild appears to be looking for.
This is a problem that really shouldn't happen, but there didn't seem to be a way of making MSBuild look in the correct place for the tools, even hacking around in the registry.