CODEWITHSUNDEEP
visual-studio-2008
gh9
gh9

Reputation: 10703

Visual studio 2008 settings get reset on close

Whenever I close VS 2008. On re-open the customs settings are reset. I cannot successfully import settings from a settings file, as VS wont change when the settings are imported. The only option I can do is go through and manually change all the settings again and just not closed VS. Anyone experience this before?

Environment Windows 7
vs 2008
64 bit intel

Upvotes: 2

Views: 229

Answers (1)

Tim Sylvester
Tim Sylvester

Reputation: 23138

Is Visual Studio starting in the context of your user account? Anything modified in the shortcut properties?

VS2008 settings are stored in the registry at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\.... Is there anything unusual about this registry key?

For example, find one of the settings that you might change, such as General\FileReloadOption, select it and hit Edit/Permissions in the menu. You should see that your user account has ownership and full control inherited from the CURRENT_USER key (you need to hit advanced to see inheritance and ownership info).

You could try deleting this registry key and letting VS recreate it, but I would make a backup first using the export option.

If that doesn't lead anywhere, I would recommend running ProcMon to watch what Visual Studio is doing in the registry. If it's trying to write settings somewhere else or failing to write them, that will show up in ProcMon.

edit:

Under the filter settings, add:

  • Process Name is devenv.exe
  • Event Class is Write
  • Category is Registry

I started VS2008, started logging in procmon with those settings, and modified the tools/options/autosave/interval to 6 minutes. When I closed the options dialog, I immediately saw this:

screenshot

If you can get the same output, you should be able to see if it's saving settings in an unexpected location, and see the result code from the RegSetValue API, which will indicate what the problem is if it's failing.

By the way, I'm also on Win7/64, but I have UAC disabled. If you're running with UAC you might try disabling it temporarily to see if that has any effect.

Upvotes: 4

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