Visual Studio 2012 Extension Issues

Question

Another week, I launched the update through the extension manager to update a specific extension. When I restarted Visual Studio, I was met with an error message to check the ActivityLog.xml file. Looking at this file, I saw that it was trying to download an extension that was no longer there, so I deleted it from the registry using the GUID as a link.

It seems like I'm still getting weirdness with extensions. Whenever I install a new extension, ActivityLog shows that it was loaded without errors, but it never shows up in Visual Studio. At some point, I even had a variant of the old extension in Tools -> Options , which simply gave an exception by clicking it.

I also get errors when opening a solution file, for example:

I tried to repair and reinstall Visual Studio 2012, but without eval. Has anyone else come across this?

Edit It seems that when I got another user to log into my machine and open Visual Studio for the first time, it all worked for him. He was able to install extensions and see them instantly, so maybe something in my user profile is corrupted - any ideas on this?

Answer 1

I am going to post this as an answer, but I cannot confirm 100% that this is the right solution ...

• I closed all instances of Visual Studio 2012.
• The folders C:\Users\toha\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0 and C:\Users\toha\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0 .
• He opened regedit.exe and deleted the keys HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0 and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0_Config .
• Restart your computer before opening Visual Studio 2012.
• She started Visual Studio 2012 and went through the initial setup, and it just ... worked.

I am sure I tried to take these steps when I posted this question, but I may not have restarted my computer. In any case, as I said, I'm not too sure what this solution is, but this is what seems to work for me.

Edit: The problem persists, and currently one solution works for me:

• Get another user to log on to the computer.
• After entering the open Visual Studio 2012.
• Open regedit.exe and export the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0_Config .
• Save the export somewhere as C:\temp .
• Log in to your account and close all instances of Visual Studio 2012.
• Open regedit.exe and delete the keys HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0 and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0_Config .
• Import the previously exported key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0_Config .
• Restart Visual Studio 2012.