Visual Studio 2010: editor stops responding to keyboard

Question

I have this very strange error that seems like a fad in Visual Studio 2010 . Sometimes when you move the cursor into double quotes of the CSS style="" attribute style="" cursor refuses to move, I can’t type anything, and the keys that respond are UP / DOWN keys and DEL (but not BACKSPACE ) keys.

The input does nothing, but pressing LEFT / RIGHT on the cursor keys causes the following error:

The operation could not be completed.

I have no idea what it is, but I would jeopardize that Intellisense is very confused and out of order.

At the moment, when this happens, I have to write any CSS website from double quotes of the style attribute, and then place the cursor where I want the CSS to appear (with the mouse) and press CTRL - V to paste it. Very annoying: (

There must be a way to fix this problem ...?

Hope someone has an answer!

Answer 1

Microsoft had various variants of this problem that were reported quite a few times through their support portal. Here is one message , and if you scroll down, you will see a comment with a bunch of other reports, all detailing similar problems (ish).

Microsoft does not seem to be able to reproduce the problem, but "is deceiving all such problems with locking the keyboard to a central error, so that we can think about the possibility of registering events if necessary." This seems to be a common response to many of these posts. Some people reported that it was just because the other window / panel / tab was in focus, but I see that the OP clearly did not have this particular problem. It seems to me that this is one of those random unsolvable errors. I hope I never get it! There are also many posts on the Internet where users said that removing some third-party plugins solved this problem.

I just noticed this particular post , which has a useful comment for it (which also refers to this SO post . Since I have no error, I can’t verify its authenticity for you. The main thing is something like a keyboard switch.

I apologize for the fact that all this answered when technically this is not an answer and just a lot of research, but there was no way to fit into the comment. And also sorry for a lot of spam messages, but again I couldn’t extract everything that they said in this post. I hope there is something useful there :)

---

EDIT: You should probably check the top-rated answer below, as this seems to solve a number of people's problems, although I never had the Resharper plugin and still tried it sometimes, but now on VS2013 I didn't have this problem again, so maybe they fixed it ...

Answer 2

Just ran into a problem in VS 2012, in C # edition.
I noticed that the problem arose shortly after the end of the trial period of Resharper, and I inserted a valid license number. This also happened only in some source files.
Solution: Tools-> Options-> Resharper: Suspend.
Try typing - now you need to work.
Then: Tools-> Options-> Reseller: resume.
The problem is gone.

Answer 3

I came across this using Visual Studio 2013 and Resharper 8.2.1. None of the solutions provided in this thread worked (even pausing and resuming Resharper)

After accessing JetBrains support, this turned out to be a caching issue.

Removing all the files from the following directory solved the problem, as Resharper re-creates new caches:

 C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Local\JetBrains\ReSharper\v8.2\SolutionCaches\[Project_reference] 

Answer 4

I sometimes have some problems with the editor, a workaround for me:

Ctrl-Tab (x2) to another code file and back to the same code (or alt tab to another application and back, one of these two ... cannot replicate the problem to make sure)

The final solution may be reinstallation.

Answer 5

Clear Solution Cache Folder

 C:\Users\{UserName}\AppData\Local\JetBrains\ReSharper\v8.2\SolutionCaches\ 

This was suggested by JetBrains support when I contacted them.

Answer 6

Permanent fixing ... Not too sure, however, that I found that pressing Ctrl + Shift + Caps Lock + Tab immediately gets rid of this and turns on the mouse and keyboard again. I know this is not the best solution, but it works.

Answer 7

I have the same problem several times a day. I did not notice this until I installed the website extension. I just deleted it and see what happens. I tried reinstalling the visual studio without joy (but again, I did not notice the problem until I installed various extensions).

Sometimes closing and reopening the code window in which I work corrects it. If this fails, sometimes I close all the windows and open again only the one that I actively edited. If all this fails, a full restart of the visual studio is usually required.

It is funny to me that MSFT says that they cannot duplicate the problem. Scott Guthrie experienced this during his beta demo of MVC4 here after about 28 minutes.

UPDATE:. So far, starting from 4-5-2012 9:33 AM central time, the problem has not been repeated since the removal of Web Essentials. This is the longest thing I have experienced without this mistake. If I do this in the next 24 hours, I will be sure to blame Web Essentials.

UPDATE: 4-6-2012 10:05 a.m. Central Time: Well, apparently this is not Web Essentials. This happened to me this morning by editing the contents of the block in the _Layout.vbhtml file. Closing the tab and reopening it fixed it.

Answer 8

I have the same problem on the IDE, sometimes the Return key does not work at all ... My solution: CLEAN project / solution.

BTW: CLEANing also resolves other unforeseen actions after amending CSS or HTML.

Answer 9

I often come across this editor freeze, not just CSS quotes, but any file arbitrarily. I have a dual setp monitor, and I have windows with one monitor windows and all tool windows on the next. Sometimes some tool windows also freeze (i.e. do not respond to a click).

I used to use IDE to disable / reboot; but silently, I found that switching to full-screen mode / completely restores sanity. So, now that I see a freeze, the switching mode switches.

Not sure if this will solve your problem, but take a picture.

Rant: All in all, I find this new WPF-based product very weak and unstable than its predecessors.

Answer 10

I tried every other workaround here, but nothing worked, and the problem was only in one solution, but not in another.

Disabling Resharper fixed it temporarily, but it returned after re-enabling, which was not a viable long-term solution.

What worked for me was to disable all Resharper extensions (under Resharper → Extension Manager). I was able to re-enter it, even after re-enabling all of them, so I don’t know which extension specifically caused the problem, but this is another way to try for people who still have this problem.

Answer 11

I never had a problem until I installed plugins / extensions. I’m curious to know if anyone had this problem without installing any plug-ins / extensions. I do not know if they are the actual reason, but since the benefits of the plugins outweigh the random lock, I left them installed. BTW, I use the "close / reopen window with lock" method.

Answer 12

Using a control source (GIT, AKSVN)? If so, turn it off, restart VS, then turn it on and open the solution again.