Visual Studio 2012 won't start

Question

I installed VS2012 Premium from our MSDN subscription and it was working fine the first couple of days but then I installed a few extensions I can't now start VS2012 and it gives the error:

Faulting application name: devenv.exe, version: 11.0.50727.1, time stamp: 0x5011ecaa
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 6.1.7601.17725, time stamp: 0x4ec49b8f
Exception code: 0xc0000374
Fault offset: 0x000ce6c3
Faulting process id: 0xee8
Faulting application start time: 0x01cd89bb777fc1dd
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll

I'm running it on Windows 7 64 bit.

I've tried to repair, uninstall and install again and nothing. I tried to restore to a previous restore system point but nothing.

The extensions I installed I can remember:

• VS10x Code Map
• VSCommands
• Visual SVN
• Nuget manager

(all the above my colleagues have it too and it works fine for them) and:

• Web Essentials
• Visual Studio Color Theme Editor
• SlowCheetah
• Mobile Ready HTML5

Questions are:

1. Anyone else has had this problem?
2. Is there a way I can uninstall extensions from a command line or software? (I removed the extensions folder but that doesn't do anything)
3. Can I repair the "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll"? Is it really a problem with this dll?

I haven't been able to find any similar issue in other versions and because VS2012 is new doesn't seem to be much information either.

Answer 1

All the above solutions didn't work for me, but this one work.

Copy dte*.olb from C:\Program Files (X86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSEnv to C:\Program Files X86\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE.

http://www.clausconrad.com/blog/the-application-cannot-start-running-visual-studio-as-administrator

Answer 2

Removing all VS settings is a bit harsh unless all visual studio instances crash immediately.

What probably happens when you encounter this is that Visual Studio opens the designer window that caused it to crash in the first place... this is often an extension, but it might also just be a bug in VS. For example: I sometimes experience this when working with LINQ-TO-SQL and have the database-schema designer open.

The easiest resolution is to simply remove the SUO file with the solution settings, and open the SLN. You can then do whatever you want, except go to the file with the issue- once you know what that file is, you can fix it (f.ex. in the case of a DBML by simply removing it and regenerating it)

Answer 3

The problem is due to path variable. setting path variable in Environmental variables to below 2048 characters worked for me.

Answer 4

First launch devenv.exe with the /SafeMode option, then Uncheck the Allow macros to run from "Enviroment->Add-in/Macros Security" and test!

Answer 5

I had a similar ntdll.dll issue ... C++ updating SQL Server ...

I fixed it by using the SQL Server OBDC connection rather than the SQL Server Native Client 11.0

We're trying to see why as it is working for some updates and not others ... but it works all the time for reading.

Answer 6

Running devenv.exe with the /SafeMode argument would probably have also fixed it.