Visual Studio 2017 crashes on startup

Question

after VS works for a while, it suddenly (sometimes after extension update, sometimes without a visible reason) crashes on startup with a messagebox "Unknown Error". I tried /safemode from DEV commandline - same result. I created al log file with /log xxx from DEV commandline. See the excerpt below, please. The problem occured multiple times on my and my colleagues work station. We can delete the app settings and VS starts - of course we have to configure it again. After a while - the same. We work with non admin accounts. When we switch to another account, VS starts properly. Can anybody help, please? We run into this issue since weeks.

....
<entry>
 <record>29</record>
 <time>2017/05/18 15:03:58.407</time>
 <type>Information</type>
 <source>VisualStudio</source>
 <description>Importing pkgdef file</description>
 <path>C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\master.pkgdef</path>
</entry>
<entry>
 <record>30</record>
 <time>2017/05/18 15:03:58.407</time>
 <type>Information</type>
 <source>VisualStudio</source>
 <description>Importing pkgdef file</description>
 <path>C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\Extensions\ClassDesigner_REG_27921.3643236F_FC70_11D3_A536_0090278A1BB8.pkgdef</path>
</entry>
<entry>
 <record>31</record>
 <time>2017/05/18 15:03:58.407</time>
 <type>Error</type>
 <source>VisualStudio</source>
 <description>Failed to process PkgDef file</description>
 <hr>80070005 - E_ACCESSDENIED</hr>
 <path>C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\Extensions\ClassDesigner_REG_27921.3643236F_FC70_11D3_A536_0090278A1BB8.pkgdef</path>
</entry>
<entry>
 <record>32</record>
 <time>2017/05/18 15:03:58.407</time>
 <type>Error</type>
 <source>VisualStudio</source>
 <description>PkgDef loading aborted</description>
 <hr>80070005 - E_ACCESSDENIED</hr>
</entry>
....

TIA, Matthias

Answer 1

I had similar issue, the solution proposed in Visual Studio 2017 crashes on startup didn't work for me as I didn't find any lock file.The only thing that work for me is to delete privateregistry.user.bin in C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_cb69e3d5

You will need at startup to reset settings but at least, VS start.

Answer 2

Meanwhile its classified as a bug: VS 2017 crashes