Visual Studio 2015 does not start

Question

We have installed Visual Studio 2015 Professional on Windows 7. It was working fine. But after we installed updates from the menu Tools-->'Extensions and Updates' today the Visual studio does not start anymore. we tried using 'run as administrator' as well. From the Start menu we right click on 'Visual Studio 2015', then 'run as administrator', the usual dialog box asking for permissions appears, we click on 'Yes', splash screen for Visual Studio appears for a second and then disappears. On the Task Manager, it does not appear as well.

Re-starting the system does not help either. .NET 4.6 is installed and Visual Studio 2012 on the same system is working fine.

UPDATE 1 The issue started after we installed the last update (from within VS2015) that had something to do with universal apps I think.

UPDATE 2 At the exact time when I start VS2015, one Windows Event log gets generated under security section as follows:

EventID 6281
Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing
Audit Failure
Message: Code Integrity determined that the page hashes of an image file are not valid.
The file could be improperly signed without page hashes or corrupt due to unauthorized modification.
The invalid hashes could indicate a potential disk device error.
File Name: \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\l3codeca.acm

Answer 1

After trying the other solutions in this thread, what finally worked for me was:

From an elevated Command Prompt, navigate to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE".

Execute:

devenv.exe /Log C:\temp.log

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241272.aspx

The log should contain a matching set of Begin and End entries for every extension:

<description>Begin package load ...
...
<description>End package load ...

If the last extension is missing the End package load entry, you need to uninstall that extension.

Execute:

devenv.exe /SafeMode

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241278.aspx

Go to "Tools -> Extensions and Updates" and uninstall the offending extension.

Exit VS. Start VS as normal. In case it still doesn't work, repeat the procedure.

Answer 2

1. Run C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Blend.exe
2. Right click on some file in "Solution Explorer" such as "default.aspx" and select "Edit in Visual Studio"

Answer 3

If nothing above works (like in my case) then open a registry editor, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio and delete all 14.0 directories.

It will reset all VS settings and next launch will be like first one after installation. Found answer here

Answer 4

I had the same problem. It was caused by Visual Studio Extensions adding paths to $PATH, which made $PATH grow too long (>2048 bytes).

This breaks VS and lots of other stuff on your machine.

Removing outdated and duplicate lines from $PATH made it short enough and VS2015 and everything worked again.

Answer 5

I had the same problem recently after I upgraded one of the packages. I tried "everything" and the only option that worked was the /Setup switch (I was logged in as Administrator, but don't think that's required).

c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE>devenv.exe /Setup
c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE>devenv.exe

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ex6a2fad.aspx

Answer 6

Here's what worked for me. Go to the Command Prompt and navigate to the folder with devenv.exe

In my case it was C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE

then execute

Devenv.exe /ResetSettings

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241273.aspx