Visual Studio not opening after error occurred applying settings on startup following repairing VS files

Question

Hey everyone,

So, my Visual Studio Community 2022 Edition hasn't been opening reliably for a while now. Sometimes, when I click on it enough times it actually opens, but it usually doesn't. I see the little blue circle going around, but nothing else happens.

I've tried running devenv /SafeMode and devenv /ResetSettings from the Developer Console, running Visual Studio as administer, and I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling, then repairing Visual Studio from the VS Installer multiple times.

After my latest couple attempts at repairing files and then restarting, Visual Studio actually started up. After skipping sign-in, selecting dark mode as my color scheme, and choosing my development settings, this error message popped up.

After closing and trying to reopen Visual Studio, it stopped working entirely and could no longer be opened again. I've got no clue where to go from here. Help, please, I've got a project deadline tomorrow.

Answer 1

Based on the error message you received, it seems that Visual Studio is having trouble applying your settings. One possible solution is to reset your settings to default. You can do this by following these steps:

1. Close Visual Studio if it is open.
2. Open the Developer Command Prompt for Visual Studio as an administrator.
3. Type devenv /ResetSettings and press Enter.
4. A dialog box will appear asking if you want to save your current settings. Choose No.
5. Visual Studio will restart with default settings.

If resetting your settings does not work, you can try repairing your Visual Studio installation again. If that still does not work, you can try deleting the Visual Studio Installer folder and then rerunning the installation bootstrapper. Instructions for deleting the folder can be found in the Troubleshoot Visual Studio installation and upgrade issues document under the "Delete the installer folder (update issues)" section.

If none of these solutions work, you can report the problem to Microsoft Support by following the steps outlined in the Troubleshoot Visual Studio installation and upgrade issues document under the "Report the problem to support" section.

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References:

• Troubleshoot Visual Studio installation and upgrade issues
• Common issues and workarounds in Visual Studio setup
• Repair Visual Studio
• Visual Studio 2013 crashes at startup because of CLR runtime settings

Answer 2

Hello @Lin, Jason,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

Please try following steps:

1.Close all VS instances, remove following three folders:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio

%programdata%\Microsoft\visualstudio\packages

Rename this folder C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio, and this folder %temp%.

2.Download a new setup file from here: Downloads, put it into a new clean folder, reboot your machine, run it as administrator, wait for VS finishes installing.

3.Launch VS and keep the default settings then check if the same error appears.

If the same error appears, please open VS Developer Command Prompt, run devenv /log command, navigate to %AppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\17.0_<UniqueID> folder, and search for ActivityLog.xml file, share(avoid the privacy information) the ActivityLog.xml file with us to check further.

Besides, if it’s possible, I may suggest you try to install and use VS 2019 just as a temporarily workaround.

Sincerely,

Tianyu

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