CODEWITHSUNDEEP
visual-studio
XlrT_115
XlrT_115

Reputation: 31

Visual Studio 2017 freezes on startup

When I start VisualStudio it frezzes on the start screen. But when I start it a second time while the first instance is open the second instance works fine. It's not that important but what could cause that problem?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 2096

Answers (2)

echo
echo

Reputation: 31

I use Visual Studio Community 2017, and I got this same issue on startup until I stumbled on this solution that deals with some corruption in the .suo file. Before I open Visual Studio for the day, I first delete the .suo file in my project folder, and it starts up just fine.

It's in a folder called .vs next to the .sln file. You may have to go to folder options View and check "Hidden Items" in order to find this folder. Dig down in that folder and you'll find the .suo file. Delete it. When you startup the project in Visual Studio, it will automatically create a new .suo file. So you'll have to do this every time you reopen.

Upvotes: 0

John Foll
John Foll

Reputation: 156

Not sure. Sometimes some Visual Studio extensions are locking up Visual Studio.

  • I think by default Visual Studio tries to update these extensions that have been installed automatically.

Recently I was trying to run Visual Studio (at Home) and it would freeze if I tried to open a specific project. But I was busy, so I didn't pursue it further and did other things. Then a week or a few days later I tried to run Visual Studio (at home), and it locked up when I ran it. I tried really hard to fix it.

There is a way I don't like where you can delete all or most of the extensions from the place Visual Studio installs them, but this is messy, and it is easy to get rid of something you need, and may hard to get it back where it works correctly again. So I now recommend against this since there is a better solution now, below!

I searched to find a solution, and someone on a Microsoft board I think said to run from a command prompt as Administrator: DEVENV /RESETSETTINGS, I tried that and it didn't work for me. Then I thought, run DEVENV /? to see what I can see, and I saw : 

DEVENV /SAFEMODE

So I tried that and it worked! Note: it was still being run from the Visual Studio Developer Prompt as an Administrator.

  • Visual Studio loaded up correctly, and I was able to look at the installed extensions.

Eventually I noticed that they all or a lot of them were disabled (probably because of this SAFEMODE parameter), and I noticed that it the most recently updated were at the top of the list. I noticed that a lot of them had been automatically updated by Visual Studio and started Uninstalling a bunch of the more recent ones, and reverted at least one of them, then later uninstalled it. Eventually, after about 6 to 10 uninstalls, I got it to where Visual Studio would load normally, without the /SAFEMODE parameter! Cool!

So I turned off the automatic updates, so this will never happen automatically again. If I load a new extension or update and existing one manually, I should always exit Visual Studio and reload it after not doing too many updates or installing too many extensions to see if these extensions allow Visual Studio to load.

Sometimes an extension will not freeze Visual Studio, but will have errors. The ones that are the big problem are the ones which prevent Visual Studio from loading all the way and freezing it up. But with the above solution, you can eventually, cleanly, uninstall all the latest updates or new installed extensions until you finally get Visual Studio to load normally!

This workaround should be more widely known, so I am putting my solution to it here. Hopefully what I found should help someone else who is in a hurry, without having a lot of time to burn trying to get Visual Studio running again without freezing!

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions