Visual Studio crash at start-up - visual-studio-2010

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?. ⚠ 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.

Related

Visual Studio 2017 freezes on startup

When I start VisualStudio it frezzes on the start screen. But when I start it a second time while the first instance is open the second instance works fine.
It's not that important but what could cause that problem?
Not sure. Sometimes some Visual Studio extensions are locking up Visual Studio.
I think by default Visual Studio tries to update these extensions
that have been installed automatically.
Recently I was trying to run Visual Studio (at Home) and it would freeze if I tried to open a specific project. But I was busy, so I didn't pursue it further and did other things. Then a week or a few days later I tried to run Visual Studio (at home), and it locked up when I ran it. I tried really hard to fix it.
There is a way I don't like where you can delete all or most of the
extensions from the place Visual Studio installs them, but this is
messy, and it is easy to get rid of something you need, and may hard
to get it back where it works correctly again. So I now recommend against this since there is a better solution now, below!
I searched to find a solution, and someone on a Microsoft board I think said to run from a command prompt as Administrator: DEVENV /RESETSETTINGS, I tried that and it didn't work for me. Then I thought, run DEVENV /? to see what I can see, and I saw :
DEVENV /SAFEMODE
So I tried that and it worked! Note: it was still being run from the Visual Studio Developer Prompt as an Administrator.
Visual Studio loaded up correctly, and I was able to look at the
installed extensions.
Eventually I noticed that they all or a lot of them were disabled (probably because of this SAFEMODE parameter), and I noticed that it the most recently updated were at the top of the list. I noticed that a lot of them had been automatically updated by Visual Studio and started Uninstalling a bunch of the more recent ones, and reverted at least one of them, then later uninstalled it. Eventually, after about 6 to 10 uninstalls, I got it to where Visual Studio would load normally, without the /SAFEMODE parameter! Cool!
So I turned off the automatic updates, so this will never happen automatically again. If I load a new extension or update and existing one manually, I should always exit Visual Studio and reload it after not doing too many updates or installing too many extensions to see if these extensions allow Visual Studio to load.
Sometimes an extension will not freeze Visual Studio, but will have errors. The ones that are the big problem are the ones which prevent Visual Studio from loading all the way and freezing it up. But with the above solution, you can eventually, cleanly, uninstall all the latest updates or new installed extensions until you finally get Visual Studio to load normally!
This workaround should be more widely known, so I am putting my solution to it here. Hopefully what I found should help someone else who is in a hurry, without having a lot of time to burn trying to get Visual Studio running again without freezing!
I use Visual Studio Community 2017, and I got this same issue on startup until I stumbled on this solution that deals with some corruption in the .suo file. Before I open Visual Studio for the day, I first delete the .suo file in my project folder, and it starts up just fine.
It's in a folder called .vs next to the .sln file. You may have to go to folder options View and check "Hidden Items" in order to find this folder. Dig down in that folder and you'll find the .suo file. Delete it. When you startup the project in Visual Studio, it will automatically create a new .suo file. So you'll have to do this every time you reopen.

Visual Studio and/or Windows Explorer Crash with TypeScript Files

In Windows Explorer, whenever I try to open a folder that contains TypeScript files, explorer freezes and crashes. When I try to edit TypeScript files in Visual Studio, it allows me to do so until I save the file. When I save the file, Visual Studio crashes without any dialogs.
I tried completely removing anything Visual Studio related (uninstall, registry clean, etc.) and reinstalling. I also tried running Windows in safe mode, and/or running Visual Studio in safe mode, none of which work. Running Visual Studio as an administrator also does not work.
I know it is not an issue with the actual repo since these files work fine on several other developer machines. This functionality was working just fine a month ago, with no changes in updates or installed extensions.
I am running Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 (14.0.25431.01) on a Windows 10 64-bit machine. TypeScript Tools for Visual Studio is at version 2.2.1.0.
Please let me know if there are any logs I can provide, I'm not sure where to get them.
The following update fixes this issue:
Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 1607 for x64-based Systems (KB4015438).
This is as of March 20, 2017.
UPDATE:
Many people have reported this issue as being the result of Windows Update KB4013429. This affects all Visual Studio installations. To resolve the issue, simply uninstall this update and restart your PC.
Old "Solution":
I solved the problem by reinstalling/cleaning Windows.
I know that's not a very good answer, but I wasn't able to solve the issue otherwise. Disabling antivirus shields did not work, and neither did running in safe mode. I think something in the registry may have gotten corrupted during a Visual Studio reinstall. Would love to hear any actual solutions if anyone else comes across this problem in the future.
I deleted a lot of stuff in the Registry under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.ts, and now I can at least view folders in Explorer that contains .ts files, but I still cannot right-click them.
The biggest problem for me and my colleague was that Git and Visual Studio was unable to overwrite .ts files sometimes ("permission denied"), and we couldn't delete them manually either.
I'm not quite sure this has solved the problem permanently for me, but it seems so at the moment:
I used Handle to determine that SearchProtocolHost.exe had locked my .ts file, and wouldn't release until a few minutes later.
A few Google searches later, and I have now disabled indexing .ts files in Windows Search. So far, no more locks!

Visual Studio 2010 crashes repeatedly

I've been running Visual Studio 2010 (the official release) for some time now. Lately, VS will crash 10+ times during my 8 hour work day. In VS2008, crashes were common when working with large Xaml files, and while I experience some of that with VS2010, crashes occur when debugging, starting the debugger, stopping the debugger, and other random times when editing code.
I've looked through the problem reports, and the one I've found that occurs most frequently is:
Description
Faulting Application Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe
Problem signature
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: devenv.exe
Application Version: 10.0.30319.1
Application Timestamp: 4ba1fab3
Fault Module Name: ntdll.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.1.7600.16385
Fault Module Timestamp: 4a5bdb3b
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 0002e23e
I'm running Windows 7 (x64). Hoepfully someone has come across this problem and has found a solution. I plan on reinstalling VS2010. Hopefully that takes care of the problem.
Do you think you have installed any extra Extensions which might lead to frequent crashes?
You can try
Devenv.exe /SafeMode
to start in Safe mode. You can also try
Devenv.exe /Log
Which will log all activity. Have not tried this so don't know What activities are logged.
Visual Studio 2010 Command Line Switches
I was having a similar problem and this helped me
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/618802/visual-studio-random-frequent-crash
Running this from the command prompt seemed to fix it. It hasn't crashed for the whole day today.
regsvr32 c:\Windows\System32\ole32.dll
I had similar issues with Visual Studio. The problem was the service pack which for some reason was not installed properly.
I had to reapply the SP1 using the Repair / reapply option. This kind of fixed my issue.
Also make sure to reboot the system.
Just to help people who search it: It was webex instant messenger related part, but not Cisco itself. The cause was a component in Studio Power Tools relevant to integration with messenger. Reinstall power tools but without messaging integration.
In other occasion it is almost always a corporate antivirus authentication helper thing. It required to manually remove registry entries which cause background TFS logins break the studio at random moments.
I had the "Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 has stopped working" error, imediately when Visual Studio 2010 was starting. Fault module was clr.dll in my case. Only rebooting helped sometimes.
I solved it by removing .NET completely and reinstalling it.
Be aware that if you updated to .NET 4.5 this includes .NET 4, so you have to remove and reinstall .NET 4.5
I know why it could be crashing. Code it self. Have you tried to debug the failed instance of VS2010 with Vs2010? If the xaml designer crashed anywhere in your code you should be able to see the stack trace. Also, try to load the same xaml into Blend 4 and then run the vs2010 on Blend when that crashes. I've had some good results debugging Vs2010 crashes like that.
There are so many things that can cause studio to crash.
I'd look at everything from video card drivers to whether the RAM is stable.
Note, there is a microsoft connect but on this exact issue at: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/634162/devenv-exe-frequent-intermittent-crashes-fault-module-name-ntdll-dll
You might vote on it or add your own information to the report but the very first thing I'd do is update my video drivers. One place I was at had a lot of issues with 2005; it would randomly crash just displaying the design surface or when opening a few too many code files; but once we got decent video cards and the appropriate drivers installed it worked flawlessly.
I disabled “Options"-"Evnironment"-"Add-in/Micros Security"->"Allow macros to run", and fixed the problem.
I think I just solved a similar issue on my computer, but probably not the same cause. It was related to TortoiseSVN (I think visual loads the tortoise DLL because it is integrated with the explorer, even if I don't have a specific visual studio plug-in). I upgraded TortoiseSVN (from 1.7.8 to 1.7.11) and it didn't crash for a few hours (I also had a 100% repro case when closing visual studio which does not happen anymore). Maybe there is some way to check what DLLs are loaded by visual studio to troubleshoot what are the candidates for upgrading/uninstalling, but I didn't go this far.
Hope it can help someone else.
While developing C++ code, Visual Studio 2010 started crashing frequently and at random times after I enabled the Task List.
As an alternative to using the Task List, I am now simply using the Find in Files tool (Ctrl+Shift+F) and searching for the string TODO as an alternative.
i was having a similar problem. visual studio 2010 was crashing. when i attached, it said it had a read access violation in ntdll.dll
closed all my open instances (there were 5) and it stopped happening.
Today I had this error, in my case it was because Microsoft released the update (KB2858725) the FrameWork 4.5.1, which the download and installed,
However this is definitely addressed by performing the following steps:
FrameWork 4.5.1 download (KB2858728) => NDP451-KB2858728-x86-x64-ENU.exe-Allos
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40779
Install the downloaded software (KB2858728)
Try Vs, but give the same error.
Uninstall the downloaded software (KB2858728)
(this task fully cleaned upgrade giving problems (KB2858725)
Install the downloaded software (KB2858728) again
Try Vs, this time if it will work
NOTE: NEVER! install update (KB2858725)
Logging helps indeed. I have the same problem with crashes. Since there could be numerous reasons and lots of log data, I wrote this .bat (Win7 x64, VS2010 Express) to keep logs organized and easy to analyze:
#echo off
rem date and time in format YYYYMonDD_hhmmss
set year=%DATE:~-4%
set month=%DATE:~3,2%
set day=%DATE:~0,2%
IF %month%==01 set monthstr=Jan
IF %month%==02 set monthstr=Feb
IF %month%==03 set monthstr=Mar
IF %month%==04 set monthstr=Apr
IF %month%==05 set monthstr=May
IF %month%==06 set monthstr=Jun
IF %month%==07 set monthstr=Jul
IF %month%==08 set monthstr=Aug
IF %month%==09 set monthstr=Sep
IF %month%==10 set monthstr=Oct
IF %month%==11 set monthstr=Nov
IF %month%==12 set monthstr=Dec
set now=%TIME:~0,-3%
set now=%now::=%
set now=%now: =0%
set now=%year%%monthstr%%day%_%now%
start "VS2010 express" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\VCExpress.exe" /Log "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VSlogs\VS_log_%now%.txt"
I had the same problem. I cleared my settings. Configured environment to use C# development settings. Then i disabled all extensions against which disable button was present. I enabled them one by one while opening, running and closing solutions. I found the offending extension to be .Net reflector v 8.5.0.179 by red gate. I had VS2010, VS2012 and VS2013 all installed on my windows 8.1 enterprise 64bit. All of them had the same issue. Whenever i closed the solution VS would crash. Hope it helps.

How do I fix an "Invalid license data. Reinstall is required." error in Visual C# 2010 Express?

I've tried to install Visual C# 2010 Express edition onto my PC, but whenever I try to run it, I get a error message.
Invalid license data. Reinstall is required.
I've already tried reinstalling it, and the message persists.
OS is Vista Home Premium. I already have VC# 2008 Express installed.
I am using Visual Studio 2013 and I have the same issue but it occurs when I try to open a solution that was made using Visual Studio 2010.
The solution for me is to open the solution file (.sln), using notepad and change this line:
[# Visual Studio 2010]
to this:
[# Visual Studio 2013]
I just right-clicked, and opened with Visual Studio XXXX (in my case 2015). Then save it. Done.
I have the same problem with Windows 7 Pro. Have tried everything suggested by the Microsoft people, including uninstalling, cleaning up, reinstalling both from the web installer and the VS2010 Express iso - with the same result every time.
To say it's frustrating is an understatement and the disinterest from Microsoft in fixing what appears to be a common problem (you can find lots of search engine 'hits' for the problem, none for a solution) is quite unbelievable.
Since this is virtually a virgin Win7 install, the only conclusion is that MS have broken their licesing checks again (why check for a license on a free product?).
Edit: Following further investigation I have concluded that the advice given by Microsoft is useless and does not attempt to diagnose the problem. It simply assumes a corrupt installation source. I believe that the problem is in fact corrupt permissions/ownership of registry keys. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Licenses and subkeys needs to be owned by SYSTEM with admins having full access. On my affected system the owner cannot be displayed and no permissions are shown when viewed by admin.
I don't have the definitive fix for this so far, as I cannot adequately edit the permissions for the affected registry keys.
Re-installing Windows is an almost certain fix, but also an extremely drastic one.
I have had this EXACT problem with VS2010 Professional Trial / Evaluation download. I can provide clear and concise steps to reproduce:
Set your system clock ahead by 1 day (oops!)
Install the trial software.
Set your system clock back to the correct date.
Start VS2010, you will receive the vague message indicating "Invalid license data. Reinstall is required."
In my case, the resolution was quite simple - set the clock back ahead to the wrong date. The next day, I was able to set the clock back to the correct date and continue using the product.
Based on other answers to this question, it would appear there are numerous reasons that you could receive this message. This specific issue is most likely to be encountered by someone with a "virgin" install of Windows since it is not so difficult to set the clock incorrectly when setting up a new computer and then fix it later (and if you fix the clock hours after installing the product, it might be hard to put it all together and realize what happened).
Hope this helps someone else.
I had this issue but I was able to resolve this by right clicking and using Run as Administrator. This boots up the program just fine.
This worked for me on Vista. It's based on work-around at MS: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/520110/invalid-license-data-reinstall-is-required
Download subinacl command line tool
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/confirmation.aspx?FamilyID=e8ba3e56-d8fe-4a91-93cf-ed6985e3927b&displaylang=en
Run these commands:
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Licenses /setowner=everyone
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Licenses /grant=everyone=f
Start VS 2010 Express again and this time it asks for a license key.
(On Windows 7 Home I had to run the above commands twice before they worked correctly)
I got the problem when instelled MS SQL 2012 with IngegrationService, the MS Visual Studio 2010 (Isolated) was installed from sql installer .
This VS returned error: Invalid license data. Reinstall is required.
I've fixed the problem by reinstalling SSDT with MS VS 2012 (Integrated)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/jj650015
I had this problem when installing a new SQL Server 2012 standalone Server.
Cause: When installing SQL Managemnt Tools it will install the VS Shell. It seems like this is all you need but this ist not enough! (it actually shows it will install VS)
Strangly the path and the application are shown in windows put you can't open them without the error.
Fix: You need to also install "SQL Server Data Tools" via Feature Add with the SQL-Server.iso
Hope this helps someone... i took me quite a while.
I get this error only when trying to open older solution files. For instance, I've got VS2013 installed and this error message pops up when I double click on a VS2010 solution file.
Getting rid of it is so simple:
Launch VS2013
Open the old solution file by clicking
"File->Open->Project/Solution..." from the menu (or simply by
pressing Shift+Ctrl+O)
Save the solution with the new format by clicking "File->Save
Solution As..." and overwrite the old file.
It appears that this has been reported as a bug, but has been closed as "Not Reproducible". One suggestiong from the Microsoft supporter is to redownload and reinstall:
Please try downloading the complete ISO from http://www.microsoft.com/express/Downloads/#2010-All, mount it as virtual drive. Then execute Visual C# setup from the ISO media and select an option to remove the product. Once the Visual C# has been uninstalled, please try installing it again from the ISO media.
It sounds a bit far fetched to me, but you might want to give it a try.
If that does not help you, I would suggest that you either post a new bug report to Microsoft or vote to reopen the existing one (I am not sure if/how this is possible).
I have faced this problem when installing the Visual studio 2010 - C# express using the local administrator account, then trying to register the application using another account that doesn't have Admin privileges, due to corporate polices this account can’t edit in the Registry by any means, so suddenly that’s how I figured out how to solve this issue I open VS 2010 as a local administrator then entered the registration key, and it is worked , I don’t understand how do that Microsoft itself didn’t mention this solution or even try hard to investigate or solve this issue
I just encountered this problem on a virgin install with a system that has a bad clock battery (when I turn off the power, it resets the date/time. Syncing to time.windows.com again allowed me to run VS2010 successfully.
It was not the clock for me, and all the hours spent re-downloading and reinstalling were a waste of time (except for the last one, of course....).
Also, for some odd reason, just adding Read permissions to the HKCR node using psexec -i -s regedit did not work by itself.
To fix my problem on Windows 7, I made sure (using psexec -i -s regedit) that my login account had full control permission over every node in the registry and that the everyone group had read permission over every node in the registry, and did all of the steps in the following link (rebooting after each step):
http://windows.microsoft.com/troubleshootwindows7sp1
This is probably overkill, but after spending 10+ hours trying to get this working, I am just happy it works... Good luck!
I was stuck for several days with the same problem. Investigating the registry i found several keys in HKCR were i was denied access even as adminstrator. Among these keys were the Licences key. Tried a lot of things to resolve this access problem but could not fix it.
Finally i worked around this problem with a reinstall of Windows 7 - choosing the Upgrade option when prompted to choose between upgrade or a fresh install. Had to reinstall video drivers but all my programs and user accounts survived.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Installing-and-reinstalling-Windows-7
After the upgrade i have access to the HKCR\Licenses again and Visual Studio 2010 starts as expected.
I had this problem and finally got passed it. I tried the solutions above to no effect. (I set my license keys to open permissions, set my clock forward, etc.) After two days I gave up...
In the end, I installed VS 2012 Express, which could handle VS 2010 solutions but could not compile 2010 code (without a COFF error). After finding this article on requiring VS 2010 to be installed to compile 2010 solution in VS 2012, I reinstalled VS 2010 even though I assumed it wouldn't work on its own. I tried opening 2010 anyway and it worked!
Analysis: as per the previous correct note by reece (and the original workaround author), I used ProcessMonitor to see what devenv.exe tries to do and fails.
Unfortunately, it was attempting to read a number of reg keys which were not under the Licenses node (so it wouldn't have been enough to take ownership of the latter with subinacl). Furthermore, even after taking ownership, the affected keys still yielded "ACCESS DENIED". Doing it as Administrator was equally useless. Plus, Visual Studio didn't fall for any date change nonsense either.
Solution - Don't try this at home :D though: I downloaded pstools and ran psexec -i -s regedit to get System privileges, then I changed permissions on the entire HKCR node to allow Everyone to Read (:P what can I say, viva el comandante).
I want to point out that adding "Everyone" to have read permissions on HKEY_Classes_Root did fix this issue for me.
I am not sure exactly what permission is needed, but this "worked for me" ... YMMV
This may also occur if you are trying to invoke an xml file instead of the exe application.
An another solution I have found to work is the one mentioned Mac by over at SuperUser: https://superuser.com/questions/651261/how-do-i-fix-an-invalid-license-data-reinstall-is-required-error-in-visual-s
When simply reinstalling the Visual Studio 2010 shell doesn't work, he points out that installing it through SSMS 2010 can solve the problem:
I was able to resolve my issue without making any manual changes to
the Windows Registry by installing SQL Server Data Tools 2010, which
is also free and includes the Visual Studio 2010 Shell.
You don't have to go through the entire install process. I cancelled the process when it was done installing the shell and it worked our fine.
If you're here from Google and are experiencing this issue with GFI MailEssentials's config export tool, check to make sure you aren't trying to open WebMon.SettingsImporterTool.exe.xml instead of WebMon.SettingsImporterTool.exe
If you have "hide common file extensions" enabled, you will see the .exe but not the .xml
Just happened to me with a new install of Visual Studio 2010 ultimate in a new computer.
This new computer had the internal time correctly set, but the date was set to one day late. I installed Visual Studio 2010 with the incorrect date. Then, I noticed of the incorrect date and changed it by sync'ing with a NTP server, and from that moment Visual Studio 2010 would not work... so I'll have to stop using Visual Studio 2010 until DateTime.Now > installationDate.
I met the same problem yesterday.And I fixed already.
Please follow the steps:
Run setup.exe again; Change or Remove Microsoft Visual Studio 2010;
Upgrade license Key (Enter new license key); Complete.
GOOD LUCK !
To everyone who has internet connection. Don't mingle with your
registry it's just a waste of time. Set your CMOS clock right then
just click on the button that say's "Obtain registry key online" fill
up the form(two fields are only required) then the registry key would
show up to your screen then just copy and paste it. then everything
works fine. sorry I can't post any images I still need to earn more points...
Background: Visual Studio 2012 Pro installed by Administrator account.
As "Joe User" (member of Win 7 Users group, but NOT Adminstrators) I got the error message.
On reading this forum I concluded this is a generic error message.
Steps to fix:
As an adminstrator, open HK_CLASSES_ROOT.
Open context menu on the Licenses subkey
Select Permissions...
Set Full Control for all users.
Now log on as "Joe" again.
Voila!
Next, as Administrator change the permission on HKCR/Licenses back to read only for Users.
Two hints for developers.
If you can develop and run an application as an ordinary user, then presumably your poor
clients don't need admin rights to run it either.
Don't leak security information in "helpful" error messages. Microsloth are probably following their own advise and giving a vague and unhelpful error message here.
I have no idea why changing the permission to FC then back again to the original setting worked. I can only assume the Visual Studio writes something to that key the first time it runs.
While none of the above solution worked for me (else than running the application with an other username),Renaming the application folder in %appdata% fixed the porblem for me.
"C:\Users...\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\MS Project"
I had this issue while installing dynamic ax setup in VM, while installing it was showing me to 'licence is not valid, Reinstall visual studio shell 2010 version', so i uninstalled the visual studio shell 2010 version and its following component and tried to install again the AX admin it worked.
I'm having this problem with Visual Studio 2015 installed.
ramonsantana over at forum.unity3d.com had the solution for me: https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/if-anyone-is-having-visual-studio-shell-2010-invalid-license-data-reinstall-is-required.298824/
Copied here for reference
Use regedit go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and look for Visual Studio.DTE
Since i have Visual Studio 2015 CTP installed i have 3 DTE, one is
VisualStudio.DTE, the other Visual StudioDTE.10.0 and
VisualStudio.DTE.14.0 Go to VisualStudio.DTE.14.0 ( or whatever
version of Visual studio you have installed) and click CLSID.
Copy the
Default (Double click Default and Copy the key inside), now go back to
Visua Studio.DTE and double click the Default there and paste the key
you just copied.
Almost there
On VisualStudio.DTE go to CurVer and
double click the key there to Edit it. Change the 10.0 in the end to
12.0 or 13.0 or 14.0, depending on what version of Visual Studio you have and you are done.
Installing SQL server data tools for visual studio 2010 did it for me! SSDT has an VS2010 IDE along with it, which overwrites the required registry entries.
You can find SSDT here.
My problem:
VS works fine, but when I create new Solution Setup and Deployment it make Setup file but when I run this Setup file, it say: "Invalid license data. Reinstall is required."
subinacl do not work.
My PC:
OS: Windows 7 64bit.
Visual Studio 2012
My way:
Close Visual Studio
Run regedit.
Pull down HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
Looking for Licenses
Right click on Licenses -> click Permissions... -> click Advanced -> click User you want edit -> click Edit -> choose This key and subkey -> check all Allow: Full Control, Query Value, SetValue, Create Subkey, Enumerate Subkeys, Notyfy, Create Link, Delete, Write DAC, Write Owner, Read Control... -> check Apply these permissions to objects... -> click OK -> click OK -> click OK -> Close Registry Edit
Start VS
Hope this help
This was my problem with my Visual Basic Net 2005.
This is how I got it solved:
Click start :-> type run (Or press win+r)
Type regedit
Click HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
Click Licenses
Double click (Default)
Clear all text written in Value data field
Press Ok
Run again Microsoft visual studio
Believe it or not, I have found cases where this problem occurred due to a build error when the build error was due to an error in xcopy in the pre-build events.
We had this problem at a colleges computer, and after trying everything here we set to forget it and fix the error from xcopy. When this was fixed the Visual Studio 2010 shell error stopped popping up, for some reason.

Visual Studio Debugging Issue

Seeing an issue when debugging in Visual Studio. All of the values under watch, and in the hover over window show up incorrectly. the only values that show properly, are values that are local to the method I am currently stepping through.
For example the watch value for 'this' when debugging shows the following under value
0x00000000ffac0388 { btnBack=0x00000000ffaccf20 btnReply=0x00000000ffacd200 btnForward=0x00000000ffacd420...}
some other variables show this, even though the variable is there.
error: 'this.foo' does not exist
The machine recently had windows 7 64 installed, since then this problem has occured.
Visual studio has been reinstalled on this machine, and we verified that the settings in visual studio were exactly the same as a different PC that is the same machine and config.
We finally figured out what the issue was. The devenv.exe was being set to run in xp compatibility mode (sp3). Doing a rebuild of the project after removing the compatibility mode fixed the issue.
Can you provide a bit more information to help us track down this problem. In particular
What operating system was installed before upgrading to Windows 7 64 bit?
Did you install Visual Studio before or after the upgrade?
Is there any other version of Visual Studio installed on the machine?
If you set your application to be x86 specific does the problem still repro?
What language is your code written in (assuming C#)?
When facing weird debugging issues, I find that deleting the solutions User Options file (.suo) usually fixes the problem. You will loose your bookmarks, breakpoints, any special exception handling, and so on.
If that fails then clear all your Visual Studio "temporary" files. Check out the "Clear Recent" script at http://missico.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!7178D2C79BA0A7E3!370.entry. Modify it for your own needs. For instance, I dislike Flash, so you may want to remove the call to ClearStupidFlash and the other non-Visual Studio calls. Clear your solution then "rebuild all".
If the problem still exists, then something else is going on.

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