Unable to find the registry path for Visual Studio 2019 & 2022

Question

Hi ,

I have installed Visual studio 2019 & 2022 and when we try to check in registry to find out what version is installed we are unable to get the generic location .
For example : if VS 2019 is installed in which path we can find the Application Name - Visual Studio 2019 and display version which is installed path as well , we need to figure out for many system in our environment , so what will be the generic path for both VS 2019 and VS2022 , Thanks in Advance

Thanks
Ramesh

Answer 1

Hi @Ramesh Arumugam ,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

VS will generate eight random characters to be identified in Registry when you install them. The Registry path you are looking for should be Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio_XXXXXXXX, as XXXXXXXX is randomly generated, they will not be the same.

You can also find the installed VS instances and their eight characters in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Packages\_Instances. If you can locate and confirm this characters, then in this path Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\XXXXXXXX, you can match the eight characters, and find the DisplayName and DisplayVersion there.

Best Regards,
Tianyu

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Answer 2

You can use vswhere command-line utility, located in the fodler %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer.
More details here https://github.com/Microsoft/vswhere/wiki/Examples