Resetting Experimental instance of Visual Studio

Question

I'm trying to develop extensions for Visual Studio and I'm going through some articles.

One key point of VS extension development is to reset experimental instance of Visual Studio, which I am having problem with.

For example, here is written that I should use following command to reset it (it is recommended also in Microsoft docs):

CreateExpInstance /Reset /VSInstance=12.0 /RootSuffix=Exp

I run command line and navigate to CreateExpInstance location and run this command (I tried with various versions: 12.0, 14.0, etc.).

However, I keep getting such response:

The Visual Studio Experimental instance directory C:\Users\Mi\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0Exp does not exist. CreateExpInstance: warning : The Visual Studio directory C:\Users\Mi\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0 does not exist. Created directory C:\Users\Mi\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0Exp\Extensions. Press any key to continue . . .

Moreover, executing this keeps creating new experimental instances in my %localappdata%/Microsoft/VisualStudio directory

What am I doing wrong? Why my instance isn't getting reset? Or maybe this is how it should be?

Answer 1

There are several shortcuts for each Visual Studio version that you can run like this:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Visual Studio 2017\Microsoft Visual Studio SDK\Tools\Reset the Visual Studio 2017 Experimental Instance.lnk