Visual Studio _Instances folder

Question

I managed to screw up my Visual Studio 2019 install by trying out some PC cleaner tool thats supposed to clean up temp files, etc. It wiped out my _Instances folder for Visual Studio that Visual Studio Installer uses to mange the installation with. The only option that I've found is to reinstall Visual Studio but that would wipe out all the extensions I use and would have to reinstall again. Does anyone know of any tool that would regenerate these files that doesn't require reinstalling Visual Studio?

Answer 1

Well, i managed to fix it. All the json files were missing from the packages folder for all the components. I copied them back from another install from another pc and it worked then.. note to self.. DO NOT CLEAN TEMP FILES WITH PC CLEANER EVER AGAIN..

Answer 2

Hello,

do you have any backup of Visual Studio files? Visual Studio 2019 has backup files in %localappdata%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\BackupFiles

Or %appdata%\Local\Temp\VSFeedbackIntelliCodeLogs\Suggestions\XXX\output\versions

Where XXXX is the nearest time in which you were working on the deleted files, so it might help you find something there.

More under:

Revisit VS Code folder structure for app data, settings, extensions in gitHub

https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/3884

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Answer 3

There were no backups in those locations but I was able to copy the files from a different install from another computer that has the same version installed that I do. I can now see the installs within Visual Studio Installer but when I click on Modify to check everything, I get this message now. Can I install that by itself?