The 'XamarinShellPackage' package did not

Question

I have encountered the following error:

The 'XamarinShellPackage' package did not load correctly.

It happens when i start Visual Studio 2015 Community Update 3 Or Visual studio 15 Preview 4. I even reinstalled windows 10 and it doesn't help.

As asked, pasting VS info:

Microsoft Visual Studio Enterprise 15 Preview 4
Version 15.0.25618.0 PREVIEW
Microsoft .NET Framework
Version 4.6.01586

Installed Version: Enterprise
Visual Basic 15 Preview 4   00369-50000-00000-AA551   
Visual C# 15 Preview 4   00369-50000-00000-AA551    
ASP.NET and Web Tools 2016   15.0.20802.0    
Common Azure Tools   1.8    
JavaScript Language Service   2.0    
JavaScript Project System   2.0    
JavaScript UWP Project System   2.0    
NuGet Package Manager   3.5.0    
Parallel Debugger   1.0    
SQL Server Data Tools   15.1.60805.0    
TypeScript   2.0.1.0    
Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova   Update 10    
Visual Studio Tools for Universal Windows Apps   15.0.25618.00    
Xamarin   4.1.1.8 (60e5c00)    
Xamarin.Android   6.1.1.1 (7db2aac)    
Xamarin.iOS   9.8.1.4 (3cf8aae)

Answer 1

The tooling in the version information here is a little out of date. The solution in this case was to perform a thorough uninstall of Xamarin in Windows and reinstall using the latest available Stable release. I linked @Dorad to the direct download, but you can find this by signing into Xamarin.com, navigating to the Downloads page and selecting the download from the relevant drop-down list for your OS / desired Xamarin platform:

Answer 2

Another quick thing people can try that worked for me was deleting the .vs folder from the root of the solution folder. Make sure VS is closed when you do it.

Answer 3

There is a potential workaround you may want to try while we finish up a fix for this.

Please, close all open VS instance and copy this file (note you may need to adjust the path to your specific VS instance):

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\MSBuild\Microsoft\Microsoft.NET.Build.Extensions\net461\lib\netstandard.dll"

to the Xamarin extension folder:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Professional\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Xamarin.VisualStudio

And then open VS and check if you can still repro.

thanks,

Answer 4

I had the same problem after the latest VS2017 update..I resolved uninstalling an extension (Visual Studio Bitbucket plugin) which - apparently - was in conflict with XamarinShellPackage. Removing the extension and restarting VS did the trick for me.