Visual Studio 2013 Aborting When Opening Property Sheets for Project - visual-studio-2013

I don't know when this started, but I discovered that Visual Studio 2013 Update 5 aborts when attempting to open properties for a project within a solution. It seems to only happen when we have more than one project in the solution.
I've been able to reproduce it in two circumstances:
The first project is C++ and the second project is Fortran. Right-clicking on the first project and selecting Properties crashes Visual Studio without a crash dump or any kind of pop-up notification. Visual Studio just ceases to exist. Right-clicking on the Fortran project brings up the property sheet without any problem.
The second circumstance is with two projects, both C++. In this case, I'm able to open properties successfully for the first project, but not for the second one.
In every case I've tried where there's a one-to-one solution and project, it's working fine. A colleague who's working with VS 2013 Update 4 verified that the crash occurs for him as well.
We don't know when this started, but historically, we've opened these property sheets many, many times. However, it's probably been a few months since I've worked on a mixed-language process, and same with my colleague.
I've turned on logging and there was a complaint in the log about two versions of the Desktop SDK having the same internal ID. I removed one of those altogether, but that didn't seem to affect anything. It's also not clear if that error has any relationship to the crash.
I've also done a repair on Visual Studio, and that did not correct the problem.
I've also tried deleting the .suo and .user files. Again, no luck.
I've done quite a bit of googling but haven't found anything that matches this specific problem.
Any ideas?
Thank you,
Doug

Related

Unexpected pinned projects in Visual Studio

I am running Visual Studio 2017 on my laptop. I usually work on several different projects/solutions everyday, and there are one project and one solution "pinned" on the MRU list of start screen and file list (the Explorer one).
The problem is, they are both quite old (~2 months since last opened), and I have never pinned them. They just stuck there. So now when I open Visual Studio, the third item is actually the real most recently used one.
I tried to remove the two entries from start screen and file list, they would just automatically pop up the next time I launch Visual Studio. I also tried to stop synchronizing settings via cloud, but it does not help (so it seems like a local issue). I cannot stand it anymore. I did not encounter this problem in previous versions.
What is the possible cause? Is this a bug that I should report to Microsoft (well, it may be recognized as an unimportant one though)? And how can it be solved?
I've encountered the same issue under VS2017 and after few attempts I figured out a solution that may fix your problem.
First of all, after having closed all VS instances, delete the hex keys in your system registry that contains the path of your undesired projects.
In order to do that I've exported all the keys in a backup file, then searched for the occurences with a text editor.
Just for reference, in my case the path was:
Computer\HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-2840329424-3192507804-1387616012-2346\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search\RecentApps{0D6B9660-F302-4C2A-82E4-FF89D03814E0}\RecentItems{AC7C50DF-34F3-4DA3-A6ED-45A6CF489220}
Then you have to remove from "ApplicationPrivateSettings.xml" file, the occurences of your projects that you want to remove.
The file is located here:
C:\Users{Username}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_0dae6c36
At last, update your visual studio to the latest version with all those tricks done. You shouldn't see all your annoying projects anymore.

Visual Studio 13 raises unknown error at the startup?

As I start visual studio 13 it raises unknown error by saying "Microsoft Visual Studio 2014 has stop working" without any further explanation.
Here's what I've tried to solve this problem;
I reinstall .Net framework
I repair, uninstall-install Visual Studio
2013
I installed another version of VS13
but still the problem persists. Do you have any further suggestion ?
I am using Windows 8.
I've run into a similar situation described here. Once i find a solution, i will post it there.
As a first attempt i would try to generate a logfile via the /log option and see if there is a problematic extension that you could disable/deinstall, e.g. NuGet.
You say you reinstalled VS2013, so the problem might be related to settings. If reverting all settings is an option for you, see this thread on how to truly really reset your settings. This involves calling your devenv.exe with special parameters (e.g. in a cmd.exe), removing files and tinkering with the registry.
I have found the solution to this or a similar problem if you are starting Visual Studio by loading a solution file.
The symptoms are that a solution that previously could be loaded with no problems, suddenly starts having the unknown error box appear for every project in the solution. Sometimes you can't see the relationship to the continuous reappearance of the error message and the project loading, because you don't have the solution explorer open, so you aren't even aware there is a correlation.
The solution to this is to use task manager to stop visual studio, confirm with visual studio that you wish to shut it down and then look for the .suo file for the solution you are trying to load. In VS2012 it appears in the same directory as the solution file and has the extension solutionname.v11.suo while in VS2015 it appears in a hidden .vs directory under the location where the solution file is found, in a folder named for the solution.
Delete this file and the problem will go away.
The .suo file contains the user preferences for the solution you are trying to load and it is perfectly safe to delete it as it is regenerated when you load the solution.
If you are getting the unknown error when you haven't tried to load any solutions, this is probably not the right answer.

Why does it take sooo long to load my solution in Visual Studio?

We have a really big solution with more than 200 projects and thousands of files. Despite of that the solution used to load pretty quickly in Visual Studio 2010 as well as 2012. However, after copying the whole SVN repository to another location, loading and closing the solution suddenly took extreeeemly long. (I am talking about 30-60 minutes here!)
I found a solution myself and I wanted to share it here, hoping that it might save someone quite a few hours of research and staring at the "Preparing solution..." dialog.
When inspecting the devenv.exe process with Process Monitor, I found out that it is pretty busy with accessing the .svn directory. Here is what I did (and this somehow solved the problem):
Kill Visual Studio
Open Visual Studio without loading a solution
Disable AnkhSvn as Source Control plugin (Tools->Options->Source Control->Plug-in Selection->None)
Disable "Document Well 2010 Plus" (VS2010) or "Custom Document Well" (VS2012) in Productivity Power Tools (Tools->Options->Productivity Power Tools) - I read that somewhere and it might have helped as well...
Close Visual Studio
Delete the solution's *.suo file. This is located in the same folder as the solution itself. NOTE: You will lose several settings for your solution, like currently opened files, breakpoints, bookmarks, current solution configuration & platform (e.g. Debug x86) etc.
Restart Visual Studio
Load the solution - it was much faster now!
Close Visual Studio
Open Visual Studio without loading a solution
Re-enable AnkhSvn and the "Document Well"
Restart Visual Studio
Open the solution - it was still loaded in seconds!
I do not know which of these steps actually solved the problem. Probably, not all these steps are required, but I did not want to reproduce the problem to find out which steps may be omitted. :)
None of those helped me, what I did... I watch with ProcMon of sysinternals, filtering for devenv, and I saw a lot of entries of fussionlog. I had enabled fussionlog for debugging purposes some weeks before and didn't think in disabling it. I just had to disable fussionlog and the solution opened faster.
You can open the Visual Studio in the Safe Mode, and then check your plugin and source control settings after opening the project.
Safe Mode means "Starts Visual Studio, loading only the default environment and services."
How :
devenv /SafeMode
Or according to your path
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" /SafeMode
source : https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241278.aspx
In my case, the following worked without any of the intervening steps suggested:
Kill Visual Studio.
Start Visual Studio directly (i.e., not from the .sln file).
Then, from within Visual Studio, open the solution.
In my case this was all it took to make the problem solution load quite quickly, without the need for me to change any settings or delete any files.
fwiw, I realize this is a late entry, but I found that simply removing (deleting) my large number of breakpoints resolved the excessive load time and compile time.
This action reduced the size of the .suo file from 214MB to 977KB. Let VS handle the .suo file itself.
Compiling and loading now takes < 1 minute instead of 5-10 minutes for a solution with 35 projects. Visual Studio 2012 Pro, update 4.
None of the other answers worked for me. CI compile times were fine, but loading my solution in Visual Studio was taking almost two minutes. VS would then operate just fine until I closed and opened the solution the next time. Different versions of VS all showed the same problem and both safe mode and deleting the suo didn't help.
I ended up following the advice in http://geekswithblogs.net/akraus1/archive/2014/04/30/156156.aspx to use Windows Performance Recorder to instrument VS and find the problem. By looking in Windows Performance Analyzer under the "CPU Usage (Sampled)" section and adding the "Stack (Frame Tags)" column, I was able to dig into the usage of devenv.exe.
Turns out the hot path by count had Microsoft.VisualStudio.Platform.WindowManagement.ni.dll 23 calls down, and below that eventually Microsoft.VisualStudio.ServerExplorer.dll and Microsoft.VisualStudio.Data.Package.dll. That pointed me to look in Server Explorer in the UI and open the Data Connections tab. There I found hundreds of mistakenly added connections that came from the debug web.config's ConnectionString section. Removing those from web.config reduced the load of that individual project from 90+ seconds to almost instant.
I have a different cause for the slow loading of the projects.
My situation is utilizing Git and found that even switching branches was slower than it should be with project load.
Solution: Run Visual Studio as Administrator
Reason: Something with the Corporate laptop is not providing the needed Git tool access (it doesn't recognize that a git repository is in use).
I have not seen any issues with Git or my personal access to any of the project files or Git objects.
I tried the above, but it didn't solve my problem.
Here's how I got around this problem, hopefully it will work for some of you as well:
Open Visual Studio 2013 with no solution.
Create a new C# Console application and save it.
Close Visual Studio.
Reopen the Console solution created in step 2.
Close Visual Studio.
Reopen the solution that was previously hanging on the Preparing Solution dialogue. Mine opened right away, no more hanging.
Using Visual Studio 2015, I ended up creating a new solution, adding the existing projects.
Deleting the *.suo from gehho's answer helped in the past, but didn't help me in this case. There's also another .suo file in a hidden .vs folder at the root of the solution.
There are other answers here for Visual Studio 2015 Visual Studio 2015 is extremely slow
For my case it was due to TFS issue. It thinks that there are more than 5000 pending changes.
The fix is to force TFS to recheck. Go to Team Explorer -> Source Control Explorer and do "Get Latest" on the projects that have pending changes. For things that are already matching TFS, Visual Studio will actually not download anything to your PC. For things that are different with TFS, Visual Studio will let you know and ask you to reconcile the difference.
This is VS 2019 Professional.
In my case there were <import ...> entries in the project files that pointed to
paths no longer available making the loading of the solution hang indefinitely without any form of information give (Shame on Microsoft!).
I encountered this problem only recently (Mar 2021), using VS 2019. It literarily takes 30+ seconds to load the file (each).
It only effects the Layout files. I believe it could be to do with the links within the files. I have not had time to investigate them.
However, I am writing this to suggest that regardless of the cause of the problem, a simple solution is to right click on the file and open it with Notepad to get your work done.

What's the reason for error message? I am using VS 2010 professional edition

What's the reason for error message "The snapshot is out of date and cannot be used anymore because type tree has been updated, A new snapshow needs to be acquired"?
This error appeared right after I launched VS2010 and added username/pwd to connect to TFS repository.
I am using VS 2010 professional edition.
It happened to me with VS2012 as well after loading the project without source control binding, a local simple WinForms project. All I needed to do was Clean & Rebuild. After that the problem was solved.
This is a bug in Visual Studio. According to http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/742959/the-snapshot-is-out-of-date "We've taken a closer look at this problem and it isn't one that we'll be able to solve in the next release of Visual Studio."
They recommend waiting around until the background language parser service is done (or, in other words, don't try to be too productive there partner.) My experience is that closing all documents, cleaning the solution, rebuilding it and then closing and re-opening with a pause after does remove the error.
Until you do something silly, like edit code. Then all bets are off again as to when it reoccurs.
I had a similar issue with VS2012 and after rebuilding the solution twice, I still saw the same error message.
Following an advice from a post from this site, I closed the Designer tab, reopened it from the Solution Explorer, and the problem was resolved.
I got this error too, but after I unload project and reload project, the problem was resolved.
Simply restarting Visual Studio 2012 was a workaround for me, but it kept happening about every hour and having to restart visual studio that often was very annoying.
I also found this post which suggests that the Productivity Power Tools are the problem and to simply turn off the Automatic Brace Completion in Tools->Options->Productivity Power Tools. Since making this change I haven't seen the error message again :)
I'll note though that I am using Visual Studio 2012 and the OP is using Visual Studio 2010, but the Productivity Power Tools are available for VS 2010 too, so this may still fix the problem in VS 2010.
The same issue persists in VS2013, but no amount of Clean/Rebuild or restarting VS will help. The only way I can do a successful publish, is to disable the AutoT4MVC extension.
I got this error too. I closed Visual Studio 2012 and opened it again and the error was gone.
I got this error when I had conflicting class names / namespaces. I was referencing a UserControl from a different DLL in my XAML file which had the same name as my XAML file (class name). Maybe this helps.
I used Visual Studio 2012, and just faced this error on my Windows 8. It seems like Turning off the VM and restarting Visual Studio fixed the issue.
I just got this with VS2010.
I had a form with a user control (UCa) with a user control (UCa) from a different project on it. Made a change to the UCb then flicked to the designer for the form and boom! Snapshot error.
Resolved by a full clean and then rebuilding just the UCb project before building the rest of the project.
I'm using Visual Studio 2012, and I got this error when starting Visual Studio, letting TFS connect to the server, and THEN opening my solution. The fix was simply closing VS and launching the solution directly.
I'll throw my two cents in here as well.
I've tried every combination of Clean, Rebuild, Restart, etc. What I've found is that restarting Visual Studio usually makes the problem go away for at least one Publish. Here's the weird part, though. You can also fix the problem by doing absolutely nothing. If you just let Visual Studio sit for about a minute or two, and then publish, it will usually work just fine. There's some background voodoo going on here, and waiting for it to finish seems to do the trick.
I have a solution with two parts that need published. One is a WCF service application, and the other is the ASP.NET MVC5 website itself. Anytime I publish the services, and then try to publish the site I'll see this error. I can publish the services, restart VS, and then publish the site, OR I can publish the services, go get a drink, and then publish the site. As long as I give VS a chance to "settle" between any kind of rebuild and the publishing of the site, everything seems to work as expected.
Take a walk, come back, problem solved. OR if you don't have the time. Clean, Rebuild, Restart, Publish (lather, rinse, repeat).

Visual Studio 2010 crashes when doing a Find all references

Complete EDIT [I messed up the previous question]
A dialogue box shows up saying
[title: find definition]
Preparing files for project '_'
Then it crashes half way.
I've tried to do it on two different computers, but it still crashes.
It works for other smaller solutions, but this is my biggest one. about 16 projects.
When you say Visual Studio crashes, does it just go into the "Not Responding" state or does it have a full on crash (wanting to submit error report etc) ?
The Not Responding state is normal if it is just that (ie. just let it keep running).
If you are still struggling, I have used Notepad++ to do search and replaces on huge projects. You would need to ensure all your projects are Checked-out first (if under source control) and then run a Find in Files search and replace over all your projects.
Sorry I have nothing more enlightening for you.
I also face this issue; a Bug related to this is already present in MS Connect, but unfortunately no workaround is specified
Visual Studio 2010 Crashes when "Find all Reference" is ran

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