SSMS 18 has stopped working on an additional SSMS Instance

Question

SSMS 18 has stopped working on an additional SSMS Instance

Bobby P 231

Adding a New Thread because I didn't get an answer previously.

When opening an additional instance of SQL Server Management Studio v18.12.1, inconsistently we get this error message SSMS has stopped working

When attempting to <Right-Click> on a Table and Select Top 1000 Rows

It sometimes works in the additional opened instance of SQL Server Management Studio and sometimes doesn't and just shuts down.

Not sure if this is Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio issue or the SSMS hook into Red Gate's products.

Does anyone have any suggestion as to what this might be and how we can try and remediate this annoying issue?

Thanks in advance for your review and am hopeful for a reply.

Seeya Xi-MSFT 16,571 Reputation points

2023-01-10T07:26:38.467+00:00

Hi @Bobby P ,

We have not received a response from you. Did the reply could help you? If the response helped, do "Accept Answer". If it doesn't work, please let us know the progress. By doing so, it will benefit all community members who are having this similar issue. Your contribution is highly appreciated.

Best regards, Seeya
Seeya Xi-MSFT 16,571 Reputation points

2023-01-18T02:26:16.24+00:00

Hi Bobby P,

In order to benefit all community members who are having this similar issue, please choose an answer to accept for the answer you think is useful to you. Your contribution is highly appreciated.

Best regards,

Seeya

4 answers

Your answer

Seeya Xi-MSFT 16,571 Reputation points

2023-01-10T07:26:38.467+00:00

Hi @Bobby P ,

We have not received a response from you. Did the reply could help you? If the response helped, do "Accept Answer". If it doesn't work, please let us know the progress. By doing so, it will benefit all community members who are having this similar issue. Your contribution is highly appreciated.

Best regards, Seeya
Seeya Xi-MSFT 16,571 Reputation points

2023-01-18T02:26:16.24+00:00

Hi Bobby P,

In order to benefit all community members who are having this similar issue, please choose an answer to accept for the answer you think is useful to you. Your contribution is highly appreciated.

Best regards,

Seeya

Answer 1

Sadly, issues like this one are very difficult to assist with. As I understand it, the issue does not reproduce at will, but only occurs sometimes. Such problems are always much more difficult to diagnose.

The advice I can give is a boring one: uninstall SQLPrompt and see if the issue reappears nevertheless. If it does, Microsoft may be interested. If the issue disappears, well Red Gate might be.

Myself, I try to avoid to have more than one instance of SSMS open. I have some bad experience of that when I mistakenly started a second instance by a double-clicking a file, some of the settings have been lost. But that's me.

Answer 2

Bobby P 231

Boy...I have at least two instances of SSMS open allllllll the time. If that's a limitation, that sure impacts my dual monitor and capabilities as a SQL Server Developer.

Naomi Nosonovsky 8,291 Reputation points

2023-01-06T19:10:43.3+00:00

Are you on the latest RedGate tools? In the past I communicated with RedGate support team and they are usually very quick in response. BTW, I am having a different annoying issue so I just put a service request to install the latest SSMS and RedGate for me. In my case I have Intellisense working on some servers fine and on other servers I got 0 Intellisense. It is like working blind - very inconvenient. I also run 2 or 3 instances of SSMS at one time all the time.
Erland Sommarskog 120K Reputation points MVP

2023-01-06T20:13:42.22+00:00

I'm not saying that having two instances of SSMS running is a bad idea in general, only that I have had some bad experiences with it (and which I've never fully investigated). And these issues were with settings, something is notoriously difficult in SSMS. I've not seen crashes

In any case, having multiple instances of SSMS open should certainly be possible.

(But keep in mind that if you want to look at two query windows at the same time, you can detach tabs to have them floating.)

Answer 3

Hi @Bobby P ,

Did you try to use the Repair option of SSMS? Go to Control Panel -> Uninstall a program -> select SSMS -> right click Uninstall. Then you will see a windows:

If this is a casual question, you can put your question in this feedback site: https://feedback.azure.com/d365community/forum/04fe6ee0-3b25-ec11-b6e6-000d3a4f0da0

Best regards,
Seeya

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Answer 4

Bobby P 231

None of this seemed to help. I am still running into issues.

Erland Sommarskog 120K Reputation points MVP

2023-01-25T22:25:32.1066667+00:00

So did you try running without SQLPrompt for a while, and the issue still occurs?
Pat Reddy 0 Reputation points

2023-02-17T14:35:17.4+00:00

Sorry Bobby, but I think you're screwed. I've been getting "SSMS 18 Has Stopped..." since the version 1st came out, often multiple times a day at completely unpredictable times I, unlike you, have no 3rd party apps working with SSMS and I've contacted MS multiple times about the annoying issue. SOOOOO much work lost to SSMS crashes over the past year or 2. Its garbage. I use an older version of SSMS whenever possible and will continue to do so until MS fixes the latest version. Nothing I've tried, even a total re-install, has solved the problem. Good luck!l
Erland Sommarskog 120K Reputation points MVP

2023-02-17T21:51:28.1233333+00:00

Pat, the only way that Microsoft can fix this issue for you, is that you book an appointment with Microsoft, so that they can debug the issue on your machine. There are lots of us who run SSMS without seeing crashes, or only very rarely. Microsoft cannot fix an issue if they can't repro it.
Patrick Reddy 0 Reputation points

2023-02-28T15:12:59.5+00:00

Bobby, I hate to tell you this, but I've been getting the dreaded "SSMS 18 has stopped working" message and crash multiple times a day since the version first came out. It has cost me countless hours of lost work and headache. To my knowledge, there is no good fix for this as of yet. No one even knows how to troubleshoot the issue - event logs, server logs, etc. I'll add this thread to my growing count of forum posts with no reasonable solution, yet.
Patrick Reddy 0 Reputation points

2023-02-28T15:25:15.9066667+00:00

I've tried to submit a support ticket multiple times. My company, who holds the license, won't assist me and the MS Support system reports "We were unable to find an eligible support plan associated with your account. Please add a support plan from the options below." I can't even find a means of simply reporting the bug. So....hard to believe Microsoft cares about their end users.

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SSMS 18 has stopped working on an additional SSMS Instance

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