VS 2013 Express for Desktop wont open vcxproj project files - visual-studio

I am trying to open the Direct3D Tutorial Win32 Samples with VS 2013 Express for Windows Desktop. To my surprise it claims that the individuals projects in the solution each cannot be opened because their project types (.vcxproj) are not supported by this version of the application.
Does anyone know why the vcxproj files cannot be opened, or how I could diagnose and repair the root cause of the problem?
Edit: I can also not open the vcxproj files in Mike Farnsworth's Rayito project.

It means that the projects were created in another version of Visual Studio.
Try to upgrade the current Visual Studio tools by selecting the Project menu or right-click the solution, and then selecting Upgrade Solution.
Alternatively you could use Visual Studio 2012 Express Edition to see if that resolves the problem.
Windows Dev Center indicates that Visual Studio 2012 is required.
Hope this helps

Neither of the other answers seemed to help.
I uninstalled visual studio. I uninstalled SQL server. I reinstalled visual studio. Now it loads C++ projects correctly.
I understand a previous install of visual studio can cause the problem I was having. Apparently so can installing SQL server Express prior to installing Visual Studio 2013 Express.

Related

SSIS and Visual Sudio 2019 Cannot Load Project

First of all, this issue has nothing to do with the installation of SSDT. I have the lastest version installed, at the time of writting this.
My issue is that the SSIS package was written some time ago using, I think either VS2005 or VS2008 as I was using Windows 7 with the lastest SSDT package fro the time, and I now need to open it up to view the workings.
I am now using VS2019 on Windows 10, again with the latest SSDT package, and studio refuses to open the project.
Unsupported
This version of Visual Studio is unable to open the following projects. The project types may not be installed or this version of Visual Studio may not support them.
For more information on enabling these project types or otherwise migrating your assets, please see the details in the "Migration Report" displayed after clicking OK.
- Contessa.SQL.SSIS, "G:\Work Stuff\Solution\40 SQL SSIS\TestSolution.SQL.SSIS\TestSolution.SQL.SSIS\TestSolution.SQL.SSIS.dtproj"
Non-functional changes required
Visual Studio will automatically make non-functional changes to the following projects in order to enable them to open in Visual Studio 2015, Visual Studio 2013, Visual Studio 2012, and Visual Studio 2010 SP1. Project behavior will not be impacted.
- Contessa, "G:\Work Stuff\Solution\TestSolution.sln"
I have found the answer and it had nothing to do with the SSDT installed.
After finding this article.
visual-studio-2019-open-solution-file-incompatible
It explains the need to make sure that the SSIS Extension is enables. In my case it needed to be installed.
This occurred because I had installed various versions of SSDT which caused Visual Studio to need me to reinstall.

Visual Studio - Using different versions for the same project

I recently started a new job, and got a machine with Visual Studio 2013 Proffesional installed. This would be great, except the colleague that I'm working with is using Visual Studio 2010. As far as I know, there is no way to work on the same project (or solution), without having quite a lot of issues, is this correct?
And if so, is it still possible to download Visual Studio 2010 (from a reliable source)? I cannot seem to find it anywhere in my MSDN subscriber downloads. All I can find is a stuff like service packs, tools, etc. Did they terminate the support of it?
You work on visual studio 2013 but there are option to select which version of visual studio you want select 2010 and run your project.
You should be able to open Visual Studio 2013 solutions in 2010, if you install Visual Studio 2010 SP1. There is a possibility that some project types won't be supported, but the solution should open.

Can you install VS2013 alongside VS2012 without issues?

I cam across this question here on SE:
Can Visual Studio 2012 be installed side-by-side w/ Visual Studio 2010?
According to one comment with a good amount of upvotes, having 2010 and 2012 installed at the same time can present issues. I then came across this MSDN page about 2013:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh266747.aspx
If you use Visual Studio 2013 together with Visual Studio 2012 or Visual Studio 2010 SP1, you can [blah blah]
That suggests that 2013 can be safely installed along with VS2012. Can anyone confirm?
Take a look at Brian Harry´s Blog post announcing Visual Studio 2013.
VS 2013 can be installed side by side with previous versions of Visual Studio or, if you have a VS 2013 pre-release, it can be installed straight over top of the pre-release. TFS 2013 cannot be installed side by side but can also be installed over top of either a previous version (TFS 2012 or TFS 2010) or a pre-release.
Looks like you can, yes.
You can install this version of Visual Studio on a computer that
already has an earlier version installed.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms246609%28v=vs.120%29.aspx
Only issue I can see is during uninstallation, where the file associations may get lost.
I was having two installation on my computer. Really no problems.
From personal experience, I've come across multiple issues with using Visual Studio 2012 and prior, while a VS2013 installation exists on a machine.
Some of the issues include built executables failing to launch (double clicking .exe does nothing, but debugging them in VS launches them), and inability to compile solutions that mix C# and C++ projects.
I would avoid 2013 until these issues are resolved, as just having it installed on a machine breaks older code, even if you don't use VS2013.
There are some minor (compatibility) issues between using both VS2010 and VS2012 on the same Solution, but simply having VS2012 installed on your machine won't effect anything in VS2010.
There may be compatibility issues with 2013 Community edition. I had VS 2012 Ultimate and VS 2013 Express installed and working without any issue, but as soon as I installed VS 2013 Community, my VS 2012 Ultimate install has been behaving unusually. When I first open VS 2012 U, there is a really long load time. When I perform some action (open a file, select a menu option, anything actually) I have to minimize and maximize VS 2012 U for the screen to refresh. I am still trying to figure it out myself - so if anyone has a solution, please share.

Error message "No exports were found that match the constraint contract name"

This morning I faced a problem while opening my Visual Studio solution, and when I tried to run it, it said:
No exports were found that match the constraint contract name
How can I fix this problem?
I solved this problem by clearing Visual Studio Component Model Cache.
Just delete or rename this folder:
%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\ComponentModelCache
or
%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VPDExpress\11.0\ComponentModelCache
and restart Visual Studio.
The version of Visual Studio you have is specified by the number e.g.
Visual Studio 2012 is 11.0 (as shown above)
Visual Studio 2013 is 12.0
Visual Studio 2015 is 14.0
Visual Studio 2017 is 15.0
Visual Studio 2019 is 16.0
For those that don't know:
%LocalAppData%\ is the same as C:\Users\{yourUsername}\AppData\Local
For those who have multiple versions of Visual Studio installed, e.g. 2012 and 2013, it might help to remove the ComponentModelCache for both versions before restarting Visual Studio, e.g. 11.0 and 12.0.
No need to rename or delete the whole folder:
(%AppData%\..\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\ComponentModelCache)
Just rename or delete the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Default.cache file inside the above location.
Visual Studio Express 2012 has different paths.
Visual Studio Express
...\Users\{user}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WDExpress\11.0\ComponentModelCache
With Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web
...\Users\{user}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VWDExpress\11.0\ComponentModelCache
I did not have to re-install Visual Studio Express
This will really work like a champ:
Solution: Try to delete ComponentModelCache folder from the below location.
[C:]\Users\[your user name]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\[Visual Studio version number]
And after successful delete, recreate the folder with the same name, "ComponentModelCache".
This issue can be resolved by deleting or clearing all the folders and files from %AppData%\..\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\ComponentModelCache
This actually clears the Visual Studio component model cache.
On Windows 7 machines, the path is different. When you type %appdata% in Run dialog, it opens the folder C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming.
Click the 'up' button to navigate to the parent folder and select the folder 'Local'.
Final path: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\ComponentModelCache
Deleting the Component Model Cache did not work for me (well, the relative directory given above did not exist in my machine). Instead, I installed an extension to Visual Studio 2012 Express. Menu Tools → Extensions and Updates... → Online → Choose any and then download. This apparently invalidates the cache causing Visual Studio to rebuild it.
Here's my source.
For Visual Studio 2013 you need to remove that folder from this path:
%AppData%\..\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0
for Visual Studio 2012 and later versions, the solution must be deleting the content of the folder ComponentModelCache:
C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WDExpress\11.0\ComponentModelCache
Visual Studio 2013
C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\ComponentModelCache
I had the same problem upon launching Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate, and the solutions here didn't work for me. I tried deleting the mentioned folders and starting Visual Studio again, but it didn't work.
However I had other problems too, like Microsoft.visual studio package did not load correctly and also Page '312e8a59-2712-48a1-863e-0ef4e67961fc' not found VS 2012. The latter refers to a message in the Team Explorer window saying "Page 'somenumber' cannot be found".
So I run devenv /setup on the Visual Studio command prompt with administrative rights. It did the job, and everything is fine now.
Remove ComponentModelCache folder content.
%AppData%..\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\ComponentModelCache
Clearing the folders didn't work for me. So I went to 'Programs and Features' and used the change button to startup the Visual Studio 2013 setup.
In the setup I choose the repair function and that fixed the problem for me.
I had the same problem with Visual Studio Express 2013 of Windows 8.1.
Unfortunatly there was no "ComponentModelCache" folder in
%AppData%..\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\ComponentModelCache.
I found the "ComponentModelCache" folder in
..\Users[username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WDExpress\12.0
and solved this problem by removing this folder from there.
If you have VS 2013, you have to go to: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0
then rename the ComponentModelCache folder.
I experienced a similar problem after some updates released from Microsoft (part of them where about .NET framework 4.5).
On the Internet I got the following link to the Microsoft knowledge base article:
Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 (KB2781514)
It worked for me.
This happened to me with Visual Studio 2013 Web, after Windows installed several updates. Unfortunately none of the suggestions in this thread helped.
I had to re-run the installer and select the "Repair" option. After that (and a reboot) it was working once again.
In some cases you may have to repair more than one version of Visual Studio. One example is when a Script Task control in VS 2013 opens VS 2012 when you click Edit Script.
Renaming the ComponentModelCache folder worked for me in Visual Studio 2015, but with a slightly different path:
%AppData%\..\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0\ComponentModelCache
I have Windows 7 x64 with a second partition on which Windows 8 (preview installed). While working with Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Phone, I come up with the same problem. But the ComponentModelCache is found here:
C:\Users\Jayaram\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VPDExpress\11.0
I am unable to delete or rename as I get the "access is denied" message when I try to use command prompt:
Administrator: VS2012 X64 CrossToolsCommandPrompt
This issue is because of a MEF cache corruption.
Installing the feedback extension (or installing any extension) will invalidate the cache causing VS to rebuild it.
click for source.
i experienced this problem in Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2012 for windows phone while trying to open file.
Then i browsed to
C:\Users\MyUserName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VPDExpress\11.0\ComponentModelCache
And Inside ComponentModelCache i deleted Microsoft.VisualStudio.Default.cache CACHE file. Finaly i restarted visual studio and reopened my project.
Then my problem was solved, i was able to open file.
Note: My OS is windows 8. And i installed SDK 8 for developing windows phone app
Thanks
I am using Visual Studio 2012. After installing the Visual Studio 2013 web express, when I want to run or open any project in Visual Studio 2012 it shows me the following error:
"no exports were found that match the constraint contract name".
I also tried the above solution for clearing the ComponentModelCache,
but I did not find the folder. I solves my problem just by: Repair Visual Studio 2012
For the Express versions of the software, the folder you need is in a slightly different place(s): For Express 2012 for Web it is C:\Users\XXXXXXXX\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VWDExpress - not in the Visual Studio folder.
I got an error with the same error message - two years later.
It's a different problem this time though, related to .NET Core dnx things.
I couldn't find an answer on Stack Overflow, but there's a GitHub issue that contains a workaround: https://github.com/aspnet/Home/issues/1455
Below is the most important part of the workaround:
Delete the entire C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio
14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\Web Tools\DNX directory. (As far as I understand, it belongs to the old version of ASP.NET Core
RC1, which for some reason is still shipped even with Visual Studio 2015 Update-3).
Delete the C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0\devenv.exe.config file.
Run the Developer Command Prompt for Visual Studio 2015 as Administrator, and execute the devenv /setup command. The new devenv.exe.config file is generated. This time there are many assemblies that refer to the
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\DotNet directory.
Run the Visual Studio 2015 and check that it shows the Microsoft .NET Core Tools (Preview 2) 14.1.20624.0 in the Help => About Microsoft Visual Studio menu.
Thanks to olegburov's post on GitHub for figuring this out.
I had to uninstall some external components like Postsharp and Apex and then it worked. I also tried the chosen solution but it gave me more errors.
Deleting the folders haven't worked for me i have go control panel and repaired
Visual Studio Installer Projects extensions for VS 2013.
And it worked for me
I got this error after reinstalling IntelliJ IDEA and ReSharper for C# in Visual Studio 2013.
First, I got an error problem with extensions, and after this I got this error:
"No exports were found that match the constraint contract name”
I simply removed folder ComponentModelCache and resolved this error.
My 2 cents:
Following all above lifesaving tips, I had a slightly different experience; mine is VS 2017 Community Edition, installed once, and I notice that have all these 3 folders:
%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0 ==> Empty
%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\7f0c75b0 ==> has only the CoreCon folder
This is the one that has the ComponentModelCache:
%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_7f0c75b0
Deleting only the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Default.cache had no effect.
So, I deleted all 4 files there: .cache, .err, .external and catalogs.
On restarting VS, problem gone and appeared a 5th file:
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Default.scan
Removing ComponentModelCache did not work for me. Reinstalling VS 2019 did thanks to a recommendation on this Microsoft support thread.
Details
This seems to be a known bug with a fix incoming from MS (as of 1/7/2020)
Experienced after upgrading from VS2019 Pro 16.2 (i think it was?) to 16.4.2 using Visual Studio Installer
Error displayed when trying to launch both nuget console and nuget package manager

Visual Studio 2012 "Invalid license data. Reinstall is required"

I have a newly built Windows 8 VM with VS 2012 Premium running on it, when I try open any sln file I get the following modal pop up error
Visual Studio 2010 Shell
Invalid license data. Reinstall is required.
I can open the sln's if I open up VS and then do project open, this is really annoying, any ideas how I fix it?
*Note I have done a VS repair and it didn't solve it...and I never had any VS RC release on the machine, all new build with s/w downloaded from the MSDN
Cheers
I encountered the same exact error when I created a solution with a full version of Visual Studio 2012 Professional on one machine and then tried to open the solution file with a copy of Visual Studio 2012 Express on a different machine. I got the error when double-clicking the solution file, but not when loading the solution into an already opened instance.
I fixed the error by opening the solution file (.sln) with notepad and changing the line that says Visual Studio 2012 to say Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop.
After that, I was able to double-click to open the solution file on the machine that has Express installed.
I'm using VS 2013. I fixed this by right clicking the .sln and setting the Open With parameter to visual studio 2013 and not VS version selector or VS 2010.
I have faced the same problem. When I set the system Date and Time to the current Date and Time, The Problem solved by itself.
It looks like the .sln extension is owned by "Visual Studio 2010 Shell" a minimal version of Visual Studio that ships with products like SQL Server and Office to provide support for add-in development without any other features. Since this is a minimal version, it's unable to load any project type that ships with Visual Studio Express, Professional or above.
The same may happen when you have Visual Studio Express installed next to a full version of Visual Studio.
This may happen when you install an older version of Office or SQL Server after having installed Visual Studio. The old installer will hijack the extension.
To repair this problem:
use the "Open With" option of Windows and select the "Visual Studio Version Selector" as your default action.
Or open the "Default Programs" option in Windows, look up the .sln extension and make sure it uses the "Visual Studio Version Selector" as default:
Or locate Visual Studio 2012 in the Programs and Features window of Windows and chose "Change", the Visual Studio installer will pop up, chose "Repair" to have it repair the file associations and any other problems that may arise by installing Visual Studio versions in reverse order (it may for example mess up the MsBuild directory as well).
Remember that when Visual Studio 2010 was released, it could not yet know what Visual Studio 2012 would change, as such, it's best to install versions of Visual Studio in the order they were released. This may sometimes prove difficult, as other products may install Visual Studio versions without you knowing.

Resources