VS2010 express beta2 - no add reference dialog, no open file/project dialogs - visual-studio-2010

Just installed VS2010 express for Windows Phone last night. Install went smoothly. It creates a project, compiles, and deploys the app to the emulator.
Here's the problem: When I try to "Add Reference" through the Project menu, I do not get the Add Reference dialog box. Same thing if I right click References in the solution explorer and click Add Reference. That's not all. "File...Open" and "File...Open Project" also fail to throw up an open file dialog box. When attempting any of these actions, the IDE quickly loses and regains focus. Even pressing a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+O) causes the IDE to quickly lose and regain focus, but no open file dialog box appears.
This is what I have tried, not particularly in this order:
1. Turned off UAC
2. Monitored file and registry access using Process Monitor during a File...Open operation. File activity showed mostly "SUCCESS" with a few "FAST IO DISALLOWED" and a few "INVALID DEVICE REQUEST" results. Registry activity showed mostly "SUCCESS" with some "NAME NOT FOUND" and a few "BUFFER OVERFLOW" results.
3. Created a new, clean Windows account to run the IDE from
4. Forced a test project to add a reference to "System.Xml.Linq" by editing the ".csproj" project file. Project failed to load in the IDE.
I don't have these problems at all on 2 other Windows 7 computers with VS2010 C# express beta 2 installed. One machine is 32bit and the other 64bit, both Home Premium edition.
My system: Windows 7 Home Premium, 64bit
Other Visual Studio products installed: VS2008 C# express, VS2008 C++ express
One other thing to note: Several months ago I installed the non-phone distribution of VS2010 C# express beta 2, and I had the same exact problems. Back then I chalked it up to being beta and went back to VS2008 C# express, where I do not have these issues.

Matt, if you're still reading this post, I have a solution:
Do you have the Tablet PC Input Service disabled? Enable and start it. This was suggested to me over on the MSDN forums, and it worked for me immediately. I have this service disabled, but I turned it on, fired up VS2010, and it just worked right off. I confirmed this solution by turning the service off again, starting VS2010, and noting that it breaks once again. Turned the service on once more, started VS2010, and it works perfectly. Amazing.
I do not think it's acceptable to require this particular service just for VS2010 to function correctly. Hopefully they fix this in the inevitable service pack. FYI, I had this service disabled because I turn off all services I don't require. So now I have two "wisptis.exe" tasks eating up ~8MB of RAM and starting every time I turn on the PC. Or I can shut the service off again and just resort to my previous workaround. haha

Here is a work around.
Just run wisptis.exe from command line and start the visual studio.
If you don't wanna run each and every time you restarts the computer,then just put wisptis.exe in a .bat file and move it to the startup folder,so that it will be automatically executed on each and every startup.
EDIT 1 :- Or else just press 'WIN'+'R' and type 'wisptis' and press 'Enter'.

I experienced the exact same problem. I'm running VS2010 Express on Windows 7 (x64). Re-enabling the "Tablet Input" service "fixed" the problem.
VS2010 has always worked fine, and then suddenly for no apparent reason "ctrl-O", "Add Reference", "Open Project", and other similar functions stop working.
No amount of repair/uninstall/reinstall would fix the problem.
I always disable the "Tablet Input" service on Win 7, because I use a Wacom tablet, and dislike the visual notification of (tablet) mouse clicks this service causes. VS2010 has so far been working fine in this setup with Tablet input service disabled, but then suddenly the problem arose, and I had to re-enable the "Tablet Input" service to make it go away.
I have another computer with the exact same setup - Win 7 (x64), VS2010 Express, Wacom table, and disabled "Tablet Input" service - and here VS2010 is still working just fine. Both computers also have almost identical software installed and updates installed, so I still have no idea where the difference lies.
Has anyone had more luck in finding the root cause?
I also use Power Toys, but I have not been able to correlate this installation with the problematic behavior of VS2010.

I'm having close to the same issue with the exception that my New | Project dialog works, but Add Reference and Ctrl + O just cause the interface to lose focus and regain focus without every launching the dialog. I have tried running devenv /ResetAddin and devenv /ResetSkipPkgs, but neither helped. I have UAC turned off as well. I don't experience the issue with VS2008.
Here's my setup:
Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate RTM
Visual Studio 2008 Team System Developer Edition with Team Explorer 2008 and VS2008 SP1
The only addins I run:
GhostDoc
.NET Reflector
Other Related Products I run:
Microsoft Expression Studio 3
SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition with SP1

tonight I uninstalled the VS2010 Express beta 2+phone tools and installed the now final RTM VS2010 Express C#. It STILL had the problem! For kicks, I tried importing a VS2008 project because it has some extra references in the project, and I was curious how they would be handled. The project imported successfully, but compiled with errors that it couldn't find a reference for a SyndicationFeed object, even though the reference for it was successfully added to the References list upon import. I remove the reference (System.ServiceModel.Web), hold my breath, and try to Add Reference one more time. Amazingly, the Add Reference dialog pops up, I add the reference back, recompile and bingo. File...Open and File...Open Project now throw up the proper file open dialogs as well.
To be sure this isn't a fluke only related to importing an old project, I shut down VS2010, start it back up, create a brand new project and try Add Reference. It works still. The File/Project dialogs also show up. I have no idea how, but importing a VS2008 project apparently made VS2010 correct itself on my machine.
Thank you for replying to my post. After hours of Googling over the past few days, your post is the first I've seen of anyone else having this issue besides me.

I found a workaround, but it's annoying having to do this:
1. Create a new project
2. Close VS2010, don't bother saving the new project
3. Start VS2010 again, and everything works as it should. I can access the Add Reference dialog, and I can do a File...Open and Open Project from the menu and toolbar.
If I close VS2010 and start it again, it is broken once more. Performing my workaround fixes it again for that session.
Still looking for a permanent solution.

I finally figured out a work-around. If I temporarily disable the Power Tools, the original Add References dialog opens fine. After adding my references, I can enable the Power Tools again.

Related

Unable to open visual basic 6 project on visual basic 8

I've created a project on VB6 at but when I am opening it on VB8, it shows the following error:
How to fix it?
As listed by GSerg in the comments, this appears to be a known issue documented in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 896292: You receive a "The remote procedure call failed" error message when you upgrade a Visual Basic 6.0 project to Visual Studio .NET 2003 or Visual Studio 2005 on Windows Server 2003 SP1 or on Windows XP SP2
To reproduce the solution here:
Cause
This behavior occurs because the VBU.exe tool has compatibility issues with the Data Execution Prevention (DEP) option.
Note: The VBU.exe tool starts when you upgrade the Visual Basic 6.0 project by using the Visual Basic Upgrade Wizard in the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET IDE.
Workaround
To work around this behavior, add the VBU.exe tool to the DEP exclusion list. To do this, follow these steps:
Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click System. The System Properties dialog box appears.
Click the Advanced tab, and then click Settingsunder Performance. The Performance Options dialog box appears.
Click the Data Execution Prevention tab. Verify that the Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select option is selected
Note By default, the Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select option is selected in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1).
Click Add. Locate and then click to select VBU.exe. Click Open.
In the warning box, click OK. VBU.exe now appears in the DEP program area.
Click Apply, and then click
OK. A dialog box appears that states that you must restart the computer for the setting to take effect. Click OK.
Try do divide your project to small projects(or comment large part of your project) a try again in each small project.
The idea is to find the function that is production the error.
My intuition is telling me that maybe is a DLL or OCX problem. Try to see all the external DLL or OCX calls and remove from the original project and try again the upgrading.
Most developers who move their VB6 projects to .Net do not even try to port them over. Even with third-party "conversion" software, the effort can be incredibly tedious. So much so, that most developers simply re-write the application completely. Consider it a move to a different language. In fact, some developers use that opportunity to port it to C# instead. I'm a die-hard VB6 user/fan but were I to attempt to port my 200 form accounting application, I'd just re-write it in C#. I started porting it, tried third-party conversion apps, just wasn't worth it.

Visual Studio crash at start-up

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.

Visual Studio 2010 hangs on attach to process / debugging

Whenever I try to debug a Visual Studio 2010 web project, VS hangs, and ultimately crashes. This happens if I try to start the project using F5, or through Attach to Process, before the process list even appears.
Hitting F5 in, for example, a Windows Form project works fine, but attach to process fails here too.
Any ideas on what can be causing this? Obviously attaching to the devenv.exe process won't work as I can't get the Attach to Process dialog to appear...
Oh, running W7 (x64), VS2010 SP1 (had same problems without SP1)
In Solution Explorer there is a Show All Files icon (highlighted in the photo below):
Make sure it's turned off,
When It's turned on, Visual Studio tries to index all the files in the solution and if you have a giant Solution it could take forever!
I hope this has helped someone :)
Have you recently installed Mono and/or Mono Tools for VS2010?
I found that to be the problem it my case. Not sure why, but it somehow got in the way.
Matthew
In my case hangs when executable type was not correctly set, ex. Managed v4.0 and trying to attach to Native.

Automatically attaching to support behavior not completely successful

I have a Visual Studio 2010 solution containing several C# projects, with Resharper 5.1 installed and enabled. All these projects target the .NET Framework 4.
This solution has been working fine for months, but this morning I got the following message when the solution was loaded:
I've looked around for an explanation on the meaning of this message, but with little luck.
Additionally, I haven't been able to repro this error, and it doesn't seem to have broken anything on my project.
Still, I don't like these kind of unexplained errors, so I was wondering if anyone reading this knows the root cause?
Hmm, that's special. It must be a debugger notification, the part of VS that 'attaches' and makes "Managed" a category. The other category is "Unmanaged", a different kind of debugger interface. It clearly lost its marbles there.
Counter-measures, in order, are:
Restart VS.
Reboot
Install Service Pack 1, it has many debugger fixes.
Consider moving 3 up the list if you haven't installed it yet, there are a ton of bug fixes and tweaks and works well.
In Visual Studio 2012 and Windows 8.1, I had this problem,I changed X86 from Solution Properties/Build/Platform target then my problem resolved.
This has been nagging me for a while. Finally I found a solution.
When I press the help button they suggest I sort out the attached debug option. Without any result I finally managed to check the Enable SQL Server Debugging option under Project Properties - Debug.
I have the exact same setting as you: VS2010 with several C# projects pointing to Net 4 and Resharper 5.1. I'm on Windows XP SP3
I was getting the exact same error, along with an empty VS icon in the taskbar.
The empty icon got away when I shifted VS to my main monitor (I have 2) and restarted. It seems that VS doesn't like to be in the second monitor.
As for your error, I cleaned up the Resharper cache (I'm storing it in the TEMP folder, not the solution folder) restarted, and didn't get the error again
In Debug Menu - GoTo Solution Properties and select debug tab and tick the ENABLE SQL SERVER DEBUGGING checkbox

Browser keep stopping with user breakpoint and opens visual studio 6 in debug mode

Following my last question (see: Problem in hosting ActiveX on Vista (in a Visual Studio 6 C++ application)) I ran into a strange problem. I hope this’ll be a simpler issue to the experts here:
Each time I run certain application like iexplorer or firefox, the Visual Studio 6 suddenly opens up in debug mode with a message “User breakpoint called from code at 0xSOMETHING”.
I can press F5 to continue but the applications run slowly and needless to say I have no wish to debug these applications…
My guess is that when I worked on my VC++ application I placed breakpoints at windows methods like CAxDialogImpl::Create(), AtlAxCreateDialogA() etc’, and for some reason it was kept somewhere.
Of course I now removed all the breakpoints and re-compiled the project but still this keeps happening!
I checked in the tools->options but the “Just-in–time debugging” is not marked.
Any idea?
(I use Visual Studio 6 which I installed on Vista)
Thanks a lot,
Erik
Not sure this helps but anyways:
Try disbaling the default debugger option. (It says Dr. Watson but it depends what you have set as the default debugger)
http://www.bridgetonova.com/2007/09/how-to-disableenable-windows-default.html
Also as per this post Visual Studio 6 is not supported on Vista. Only Visual Basic is.
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/167-visual-studio-6-on-vista.html
You should probably re-ensure yourself that you have removed all calls to DebugBreak() and manual break-points. Also try to ensure that when you recompile you re-register everything to point to the right places (i.e. the activex pointed to by the guid in the registry is actually the latest recompile).

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