I had a plugin installed in Visual Studio 2008, and it created some extra dockable windows. I have uninstalled it, and I can't get rid of the windows it created - I close them, but they always come back. They're just empty windows now, since the plugin is no longer present, but nothing I've tried gets rid of them. I've tried:
Window -> Reset Window Layout
Deleting the .suo files in my project directories
Deleting the Visual Studio 9.0 folder in my Application Settings directory
Any ideas?
Have you tried this? In Visual Studio go to Tools > Import and Export Settings > Reset all settings
Be sure you back up your settings before you do this. I made the mistake of trying this to fix an issue and didn't realize it would undo all my appearance settings and toolbars as well. Took a lot of time to get back to the way I like things.
Try devenv.exe /resetuserdata. I think it's more aggressive than the Tools > Import and Export options suggested.
Also check Tools > Add In Manager and make sure there aren't any orphans there.
How about running the following from command line,
Devenv.exe /ResetSettings
You could also save those settings in to a file, like so,
Devenv.exe /ResetSettings "C:\My Files\MySettings.vssettings"
The /ResetSettings switch, Restores Visual Studio default settings. Optionally resets the settings to the specified .vssettings file.
MSDN link
I had similar problem except that it happened without installing any plugin. I begin to get this dialog about source control every time I open the project + tons of windows popping up and floating which I had to close one by one.
Windows -> Rest Windows Layout, fixed it for me without any problems. It does bring the default setting which I don't mind at all :)
If you want to reset the window layout. Then
go to "WINDOW" -> "RESET WINDOW LAYOUT"
If you have an old backup copy of CurrentSettings.vssettings, you can try restoring it.
I had a completely corrupted Visual Studio layout. When I tried to enter debug, I was told that VS had become unstable. When I restarted, my window layout would then be totally screwed. I tried restoring the VS current user settings in the registry from a backup, but that didn't help. However, restoring CurrentSettings.vssettings seems to have cured it.
There seems to be a bunch of binary stuff in there and I can imagine it gets irretrievably corrupted sometimes.
Note: if you have vs2010 and vs2008 and you want to reset the 2008, you will need to specify in command line the whole path. like this:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" /resetsettings
If you don't specify the path (like devenv.exe /resetsettings), it will reset the latest version of Visual studio installed on your computer.
I close them, but they always come back
When you say "they always come back" do you mean "next time you restart Visual Studio" or "immediately"?
One quirk of Visual Studio (at least VS2005) is that settings aren't saved until you exit. That means that if VS crashes at all while you are using it, any layout changes you made will be lost. The way around this is to always gracefully exit when you have set up everything like you want it to be.
Not sure if this will help your particular situation though.
I tried most of the suggestions, and none of them worked. I didn't get a chance to try /resetuserdata. Finally I reinstalled the plugin and uninstalled it again, and the windows went away.
If you've ever backed up your settings (Tools -> Import and Export Settings), you can restore the settings file to get back to a prior state. This is the only thing that I've found to work.
If you want to reset your development environment of your visual studio, then you can use Import and Export setting wizard. see this for all steps:
http://www.authorcode.com/forums/topic/how-to-reset-development-environment-settings-of-your-visual-studio/
Window -> Reset Window Layout didn't exist for me. For anybody looking in 2022 or later, I finally found the answer! The crucial information, buried in a VSCode update release note, was right at the bottom of this section. Here it is if the link breaks in the future:
If you'd like to reset all views back to the default layout, you can run Views: Reset View Locations from the Command Palette.
Related
Since I changed my windows password I can no longer type into a checked out file in Visual Studio 2013! Where before I just needed to start typing and it would check out the file in the background, now it won't even allow me to type into the file after I manually check the file out, from the solution explorer! It's as if VS 2013 is ignoring the keyboard on the project under source control. It's fine for other projects even project's under source control!
I think I remember seeing this before with older versions of Visual Studio and resolved it with a "Go online" option but I can't see that option in VS 2013, or the project is not "off line" so the option is not available.
This is obviously related to the TFS setting on the project but I simply cannot get past it. I am blocked and would appreciate any suggestions.
I suspended Resharper and restarted Visual Studio 2013. Once I reopened it the problem was gone. Resuming Resharper caused the problem to emerge again.
The solution is quite large so maybe that is it. Before putting Resharper into suspend mode I tried switching off code analysis thinking the workload is just too great, but that didn't help. The suspend did though. I hope this helps anyone else with the same issue.
All I have to do now is to figure out how to get Resharper back in the game without the problem coming back. We rely on Resharper as it is an wonderful tool. Since the solution has many projects in it, I am going to try create a smaller solution with my web project and just reference the other projects as assemblies. Maybe that will help
Update:
Clearing the resharper cache as suggested by Alexander resolved the original issue.
I'd like to add Alexander's comment as answer, since it helped me exactly to solve the issue:
Clean R# (ReSharper) caches by deleting all folders (and files) from the path
C:\Users\{User Name}\AppData\Local\JetBrains\ReSharper\v8.2\SolutionCaches\
and then reopen the solution.
Note: (Thanks to Antak for providing this info!)
You can paste
%userprofile%\AppData\Local\JetBrains\ReSharper\v8.2\SolutionCaches
into file explorer's path textbox (open it via Win+E, or use Win+R and paste the path into the command window), this will resolve the physical path into your user's directory automatically.
This happened to me. All my JavaScript files went "dead." By "dead" i mean that all the normal VS intellisense coloring/functionality was gone; js files were un-editable, although Resharper was still working sort of; all other non-js files seems to be normal. In addition to Resharper, I had also previously installed Web Essentials and was using both tools.
First, I cleared the R# caches as mentioned above by Alexander. After restarting VS, this DID NOT work. JS files still dead.
Then i disabled Web Essentials. Then I restarted. THIS WORKED.
I then re-enabled Web Essentials, restarted again, and all seems to be OK. Am crossing my fingers....
I too had this problem with the latest version of ReSharper (9.0.0.0), but clearing the cache as stated above did not work. I actually had to go into my ReSharper options (ReSharper -> Options -> General) and click the "Clear Caches" button. Once I did this and restarted VS everything is working again.
Try: /safemode
I had a similar problem where I could not edit most of my files, but I could edit *.ps1 files.
I don't have TFS, I do have resharper and other plugins.
What worked for me was:
Start visual studio in safe mode: C:\..\IDE>devenv /safemode
Close VS.
Start VS normally.
That probably has the same effect as suspending and resuming resharper, but I'm not sure which plugin could be causing the problem. If you are having trouble this is something you could try.
I hit the refresh(restart) and it solved a similiar problems so maybe you better try that before an IDE restar. ctrl shift F5
Every time I launch Visual Studio 2010, it creates a directory called "Visual Studio 2010" in the current working directory at the time I launched it. It just started doing this at the same time that it forgot all of my toolbar settings and so on.
I've clearly got an incorrect setting somewhere, but I can't find it.
Under Tools\Options\Projects and Solutions\General I have:
Projects location:
D:\ian
User project templates location:
M:\Visual Studio 2010\Templates\ProjectTemplates
User item templates location:
M:\Visual Studio 2010\Templates\ItemTemplates
How do I stop this spurious .\Visual Studio 2010 directory being created and tell it to use the proper one on M:\ instead?
Edit: Since I've started a bounty on this, please be reasonable and don't post a suggestion that doesn't answer the question. For example, don't say 'Have you tried reinstalling?' or 'Have you tried deleting all your settings?' Thank you for your understanding.
Damn, too annoying. You don't know which plugin/addon or something do this...
So we can't find it too* Ok. thanks god, stackoverflow is here... Here is the solution;
Press Win + R
Type "regedit"
Go to this folder by treeview; "[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0]"
Edit everything which are like this; "Documents\Visual Studio 2010\"
Last step; In registry editor, press Ctrl + F
Search the string "Documents\Visual Studio 2010\". And change them too if anything appears...
I suggest an advanced registry editor for this.
Good luck & best regards...
UPDATE:
And if you still have the problem; open VS2010, go to "tools" > click "extension manager" > try to disable all plugins(I mean all of them). And play with VS again, create a new project etc. If there will be created a new folder( named like "Visual Studio 2010" ) in the "documents" then we will sure this comes from the ide:visual studio 2010( not add-ons ). Also, if you are using a "subversion control software" or "sdk service" try to disable them too... ( with disabling services in OS management )
This is the final answer that worked for me.
It turns out that Visual Studio 2010 regularly and automatically exports your settings file. (You would probably expect it to save your settings on exit, but not export them unless you explicitly ask it to.) I think it does this every time you quit, but it seems to create the directory into which it will export as soon as it is launched. This is the problem I was seeing.
This is how I resolved it:
Tools > Options > Environment > Import and Export Settings
The field Automatically save my settings to this file: was just Visual Studio 2010\Current Settings.vssettings. This is a relative path, so the folder Visual Studio 2010 was being created in the current working directory. I changed it to an absolute path M:\Visual Studio 2010\Current Settings.vssettings and this solved the problem.
This is another different way, so I'm adding a new answer here.
I don't want to edit my previous answer too much( It's started to looks ugly )...
Just go that link, download/copy the script, carefully save and edit for your needs;
https://github.com/jerker-back/VSUtilities/blob/master/custom_vspaths.js
and run it under admin.user.rights( or disable windows uac )...
Is it possible that you have a macro in your EnvirommentEvents that is causing this? Go to menu Tools -> Macros -> Macros IDE. Look in each of the macros trees in the Project Explorer for EnvironmentEvents to see if any of those macros is the culprit.
None of the solutions here worked for me. I don't think we've seen the golden bullet yet.
I had been writing to the same settings folder for years and all of a sudden that was no good for visual studio anymore. The folder was a networked folder. One day, every time I fired up a solution it would start making me yet another Visual Studio 2010 folder in the same directory as the .sln file.
I tried (and re-tried) specifying where settings are saved. I also went through and did some registry changes. In the end, what seemed to fix it was to re-config the IDE to use a local path, and then re-config it again to use the network path. I did this for all the paths you can set in Tools...Options...Environment...Import and Export Settings as well as Tools...Options...Environment...Projects and Solutions...General. And now I'm back to the setup I've been using for the last few years. It has stopped creating new folders every time I open a solution. For now, anyway.
The brute-force solution:
Run regedit and rename the folder [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio] to something like "VisualStudio_BAK".
Run devenc.exe /resetsettings to reset all settings to default.
If you don't know what you are doing, don't try this...! ;-)
I've got a small problem with the VS2010. I installed Resharper and soon after my installation period has expired, My Visual Studio 2010 Intellisense stopped working. Its very hard to work without Intellisense. It doesn't even show the member properties even . I tried doing devenv.exe /ResetSettings and I end up with an error saying:
it is not recognised as a internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
My solution
I don't know how people are solving this but I just solved my above problem by resetting the Vs settings. Tools-->Import ExportSettings-->selecting the reset all settings and following the wizard .
By doing this of course I lost the little settings I made just like adding line numbers and stuff, but I did that again.
Not sure if this is the ideal solution for people looking for an answer, but just helped me to get the Intellisense in the first place which I was actually looking for.
This worked for me.
http://miguelmoreno.net/post/Intellisense-not-working-in-Visual-Studio.aspx
In Visual Studio select Tools > Options > Text Editor > All Languages. Ensure that the checkboxes in the Statement Completion section are actively checked (not grayed out).
For risk of sounding like tech support:
Reboot your machine and check if Intellisense is back, else try devenv /ResetSettings again.
I tried to reboot and devenv.exe /resetsettings.
What actually worked for me was the following:
Goto Tools > Options > Resharper
Suspend Resharper
Resume Resharper
No application restart or PC reboot or anything required after that.
Found here: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2010/11/09/resolving-issue-ldquoresharper-auto-completion-live-templates-and-intellisense-stop-working.aspx
Saving my project then restarting VS worked for me.
I accidentally had two of the same file open in the IDE. After closing one of them, intellisense started working again! This is how you can reproduce it:
Drag a tab onto your desktop, then open the same file by double clicking it in the Solution Explorer. You now have 2 of the same thing open. You can now drag that floating window back into the IDE as a tab and now you (unfortunately) have 2 of the same file open at the same time. You can only edit the original one and the other one will drive you crazy.
#Ronald McDonald, I tried that solution, but everytime I go back in, the Statement Completion options are reset, so that the boxes are filled, not checked (i.e. on for some languages, off for others). I'm guessing that it's ReSharper responsible?
For anyone else having this problem, if the above solutions don't work, and you have ReSharper, give this a try:
Reset key mappings in Visual Studio: Make sure only one instance is running. Tools -> Options -> Environment -> Keyboard -> Reset.
Restore ReSharper keyboard shortcuts: ReSharper -> Options -> Environment -> General -> ReSharper keyboard shortcuts. Close Visual Studio.
It's too early to tell, but I think (hope) that this has worked for me. I keep losing not only Intellisense, but undo/redo stops working (even greys out in the Edit menu, until I reopen the menu a few times), along with copy/paste and most (sometimes all) Ctrl+ keyboard shortcuts. I've had this problem for years, on different computers, and I'm pulling my hair out trying to fix it. I really hope this one finally worked!
First check in VS tools-> options-> editor -> statement completion is checked (not grayed out).
Then follow this procedure:
close all open files in the VS IDE.
Save & restart VS.
Make sure the file you are writing into is included in the project (and not excluded by mistake)
If this does not solve the problem, close VS & try from the command line running: devenv /ResetSettings
else try installing the hotFix: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=26662
cheers
Change the path location for the project . If it exist in some folder then place it into another.
This will solve the issue
Intellisense stopped working. Tried the methods suggested here to no avail. Noticed it was only affecting only the current file. Closed Project, deleted the .suo file and restarted project. It is now working for all files. :)
If using ReSharper:
ReSharper / Options... / "Clear Caches".
Quit and restart Visual Studio.
I found that I had mistakenly uninstalled SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP2.
Re-installed, then set Options->TextEditor->Advanced->Disable Database = False
worked for me.
I have a blank property window that I can not get rid of in Visual Studio 2008 SP1. I have tried every thing to get rid of it.
If I close it it shows right back up after going into debug mode or restarting visual studio. I have tried every thing to fix all the way to reinstalling VS with no luck.
Does any one have a solution for this?
Use the following fix:
Close all instances of Visual Studio Navigate to the following directory (I am using 2008 – for a different version change the 9.0 to reflect the correct version number/folder)
"%userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0".
You should see four files:
toolbox.tbd
toolbox_reset.tbd
toolboxIndex.tbd
toolboxIndex_reset.tbd
Move these files to another folder (or, if you are very brave, delete them altogether. Note, this is very much a case of “Worked on my (colleague’s) PC” – do this at your own risk. Restart Visual Studio and hey presto, your Toolbox should be back to where it needs to be. The user in question did not have any custom items in his toolbox so I can only assume that the fix reverted the toolbox to the original Visual Studio state.
Click Window, Reset Window Layouts.
If that doesn't help, click Tools, Import and Export Settings, Reset all settings. (But backup your current settings)
One thing to try is via the Visual Studio 2008 command line you can run the following command.
devenv /resetsettings
This will restore to factory settings, this could clear up the issue, re-install wouldn't do this for you.
I have this problem where I open Visual Studio and the internal windows are scattered all over the place. None of them are docked; some that should be visible have become invisible and vice versa. I then have to spend ages getting the windows back where I like them.
It only seems to happen with some solutions and only appeared recently.
For the life of me I can't fix the problem. Has anyone else been through this?
Sounds like there is definitely a problem with Visual Studio retaining your settings between round-trips and possibly your Visual Studio settings profile in general.
The solution I'd recommend is firstly to reset all settings, secondly customize things to your personal preference and finally take a backup of those customized settings. The idea is that this settings backup file can be used later to automate a quick settings restore to a point you are happy with. The following steps show how to do this and hopefully should sort out even the most confused Visual Studio setting issues:
Close down all instances of Visual Studio.
Go to Start > Programs > Visual Studio 200X > Visual Studio Tools > and choose 'Visual Studio 200X Command Prompt'
Run the sligthly less well known 'devenv.exe /ResetUserData' command. With this command you will lose all of your Visual Studio environment settings and customizations. Because of this, the /ResetUserData switch is not officially supported and Microsoft does not advertise it (the switch is not described in the help for devenv.exe you get when you type devenv.exe /? in a command prompt). Importantly, wait for the resulting devenv.exe process to disappear from Task Manager or even better Process Explorer.
When the process disappears from Task Manager or Process Explorer, run 'devenv.exe /ResetSettings' which will restore the IDE's default settings and eventually start a single instance of Visual Studio.
Now in Visual Studio choose 'Import and Export Settings...' near the bottom of the 'Tools' menu to start the Import and Export Settings Wizard.
Choose 'Reset all settings' radio button and Next > Choose 'No, just reset settings, overwriting my current settings' and Next > Choose your personal 'Settings Collection' preference, I would choose Visual C# Development Settings here (Note: What you choose here has an effect on keyboard shortcuts etc. but you can always repeat this process until happy) and click Finish.
When you get the message that 'Your settings were successfully reset to XXXXXX Development Settings.' click Close then spend a good bit of time adding any personal customizations to Visual Studio such as opening windows you always want open, customizing toolbars and adding any toolbar buttons etc.
When you are finished with your personal customization and completely happy with your setup go again to Tools > 'Import and Export Settings...'
Choose 'Export selected environment settings' radio button and Next > Tick 'All Settings' and Next > Choose a file name and directory and click Finish to store a backup of your current settings in a .vssettings file.
In future if things go haywire again head back to Tools > 'Import and Export Settings...' and this time choose 'Import selected environment settings' radio button and Next > Choose 'No, just import new settings, overwriting my current settings' and Next > Either choose the name of your .vssettings file from the list (usually under the My Settings folder) or Browse.. to where you saved the file and Next > Tick 'All Settings' and click Finish.
Importantly, close the single instance of Visual Studio. Any future instance you open should retain your latest customizations.
Visual Studio corrupts its settings with regular monotony (always has done, I've been suffering from this since the Visual C++ days, and it's still a bugbear in VS2013).
Often this seems to be totally at random, but it's highly probable after a crash.
It will also lose any changes to your settings if Visual Studio doesn't shut down cleanly - for some reason instead of saving back the settings when you OK the dialog, VS seems to wait until it quits to write back your changes, so after changing options I always quit and restart to ensure the changes have been flushed to disk. Similarly you should never change options with 2 or more instances of VS running, as the last one to quit will overwrite the settings.
In particular, there is an easily reproducible case: If you launch two or more copies at the same time (by which I mean if you start up two or more copies, so they are all initialising at the same time), they seem to fight over the settings file and it becomes corrupted or resets to defaults.
The best two workarounds I've found are:
Never launch more than one instance at a time. If you need to run several instances concurrently, then wait for the first one to finish loading its Solution before you start to launch the next.
Always use Tools > Import and Export Settings to save your settings to a backup file, so that recovering from this corruption only takes a few seconds each time it happens.
Another smaller, but still rather irritating habit is that if VS is minimised when it is quit (e.g. by shutting down), it corrupts its window position information and the next time you run it, it will be maximised.
I had a similar issue when the My Documents folder was stored on a mapped drive. If I opened VS before mapping the drive, VS would act as if it was the first time it had been opened. I solved this issue by storing the environment settings on the local disk.
I just ran into this problem too (seemed to trigger after a windows update) where I kept getting some bogus window layout no matter what I did. The above suggestions didn't work either. But luckily the suggestions in: Why doesn't VS 2008 IDE remember my preferences? of deleting:
%APPDATA%\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\windows.prf
worked.
TP
Actually I worked out what the culprit was: previous VS crashes.
If one of my Visual Studio instances crashes for whatever reason - the next time I start up VS, I get a weird batch of settings. The behaviour depends on various factors, like whether or not I had other instances of VS open at the time.
I tried Peter McG's solution, still didn't help.
What ended up working for me was to delete my VS Solution User Options (.sou). Located in the same directory as my solution.
Only bad thing is you have to redo all of your settings. This included my exception changes. Not to much to change, but if you have a lot of customization it could be a real pain.
There must be something in that file messing everything up, but deleting the whole file is quick and easy.
Which solution you're opening shouldn't matter because those settings are not solution-specific. But I wonder do you maybe have Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 installed? If so, opening a solution created in 2005 will open VS 2005 and opening a 2008 solution will open VS 2008. You may have VS 2005 even if you didn't install it. For example, InfoPath 2007 installs a VS 2005 shell.
First I would position the windows where you want them, then do a Tools -> Export Settings and include only the window layouts. That way you at least have something you can revert to.
Then I would check Tools -> Options -> Import Export Settings and make note of where the "Automatically Save My Settings To This File" path is set to. Keep an eye on that file. Do you have any sync software that may be inadvertently overwriting it? Does it point to a non-existing location?
My issue is similar, but the result is the app crashes. The problem was this value
In HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\MainWindow. It was set to "0 1000 -280 -100 3" probably due to having multiple screens and moving the UI around a lot.
Deleting this value allowed the app to restart successfully. It gets recreated on startup.
I'm facing similar issue. And it also only started recently, like, within the last 30 days or so. The only thing I remember changing in this period was updating Resharper 4.5.
I have experienced something similar. In my case the text editor colors (c# editor for example) are going haywire. The only solution that I tried and works for me is change color theme so something else and then back to what I want.
In my case its not the Window layout being corrupted but Intellisense offering code completion and pop-up help. Never had this issue for the last decade, now it happens 3 times a day at least. Win8.1, Visual Studio 2013, ReSharper 8 and now ReSharper 9 (in hopes the upgrade would fix it).
I now routinely have to
close the solution,
Tools/Import-Export Settings/Reset all settings
Close Visual Studio
Open Visual Studio Import my saved settings
RE-open the solution and continue working
I can then work fine again for quite some time until something goes awry... lets say a stack-overflow while I'm debugging. At that point I just know my settings are screwed and my Intellisense is dead again.
I'm starting to wonder if it isn't something to do with a latest Visual Studio update. There are things in there I never use like the advertising crap and Office development integration. MS Office has its own issues, like Office 64 bit not being seen by any other application such as Quicken as an installed email program. Or maybe its a conflict with ReSharper which wants to overtake and 'extend' the Intellisense feature.
Either way, I'm sure its a different manifestation of the same issue: Visual Studio settings are going sideways during normal use.
I just came across this issue in VS 2012, reset window layout was doing nothing.
I extrapolated
%APPDATA%\Application Data\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\windows.prf
to
%appdata%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\Windows.index
... deleted it and was back in business!
Make sure you close all instances of VS first!