Visual Studio freezes or hangs on startup

Question

I have been using Visual studio for a while and found that when I open visual studio and open the project all the files that were open last time remain open.

This causes my Visual Studio to freeze or crash on startup.

I am using a lot of plugins in my installation and wonder if there is a way to prevent this from happening.

Answer 1

I was having this issue when using the Git source-control plugin.

I ran devenv.exe /SafeMode

And then in Options -> Source Control -> Plug-in Selection made sure "None" or "Visual Studio Team Foundation Server" was selected. After that, VS started normally.

Answer 2

I had the same issue with Community 2015 version. I solved it with Vidas Vasiliauskas suggestion, which was to erase user settings.

The thing is that I previously had enterprise 2015 version, in which I was logged in with my Microsoft account. When trying to open community version, it tried to do so with that same account, which I believe was the cause of the issue.

Therefore, I would suggest to those with the same problem to run the following command at Command Line Prompt:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe /ResetUserData

Answer 3

I have got recently VS2017 stucked on start up . so I did this and worked for me : 1 - start cmd as admin : run the following:

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Professional\Common7\IDE" devenv.exe /SafeMode

2- once VS is started , go to Tools => Extentions and Updates : then uninstall all plug-ins that installed recently ( notice the installed date ) and unnecessary ones)

Answer 4

Delete the folder from the c:\Program Files\

Then run: Devenv /ResetSkipPkgs

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241276%28VS.80%29.aspx

or

You are probably looking for the /SafeMode command line switch:

devenv.exe /SafeMode

This will start Visual Studio with all add-ins disabled.

Answer 5

When it hangs on the splash screen:

It could be that an anti-virus solution is blocking Visual Studio.

Kaspersky Internet Security 16.0.1.445 makes Visual Studio 2015 hang on the splash screen. The older version 16.0.0.614 works fine.

Answer 6

In my case, VS 2013 Professional was hanging on startup because the license was no longer valid.

Last item in the log file:

<entry>
    <record>367</record>
    <time>2015/07/13 20:11:05.051</time>
    <type>Information</type>
    <source>UserConnection</source>
    <description>[e-mail] signed in for IDE user</description>
</entry>

And on the msdn.microsoft.com subscription page: "Your subscription is no longer active, contact your administrator."

I had to get an updated subscription from my employer.