Visual Studio Installer will not start

Question

Says "Unable to launch the installer: Error the system cannot find the file specified."

So I cannot update the VS edition.

Answer 1

Hello @Kevin A,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

You can try to reinstall a new VS Installer by renaming following folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer => downloading a new bootstrapper file(setup file) => clicking it to reinstall VS Installer.

Also, check and confirm that following folders(_bootstrapper, _Channels and _Instances) exist under C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Packages. Especially the _Instances folder.

If above folders don’t exist, you might need to uninstall VS and reinstall VS. You can use InstallCleanup.exe tool to uninstall VS. If the InstallCleanup.exe tool doesn’t work, kindly try the method shared here: How to uninstall Visual Studio 2022 and all its components when I couldn’t open the Installer?

Sincerely,

Tianyu

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