How to do a clean uninstall/install of Visual Studio 2015? - c#

Operating System: Windows 10
Background of the issue: I was working on an C# web MVC type of project on VS2015, my computer suddenly crashed (due to memory issue.) Then, I restarted VS2015, and tried to load my project; however, the solution explorer would not show my files, so I decided to try different projects and the same issue happened. Therefore, I decided to create a new project, but the new project window would not display the templates at all (F#, C#, web MVC ...etc.)
So I figured some VS2015 files got corrupted, so I decided to do the following:
Ran repair through the installation
uninstalled, then installed VS2015 again.
I uninstalled through Revo Uninstaller, deleted all the registries, and folders. Then, I ran regedit and manually deleted all VS2015 registries (I was getting desperate)
None of the above worked...
P.S. I am using the Community edition.

Mount the iso, if it's drive letter is 'd', run the code below in command prompt. (replace 'd' with the drive letter)
D:\vs_community.exe /uninstall /force

Just as #TomBlodget answered, the issue was with the Windows user where the incident happened. When I launched VS on a new windows user, it worked fine. For now, I will keep using the new Windows user and once I figure out what happened with the original user, I will post it here for future reference.

Related

Unable to build project after new windows install

I recently bought a new computer. After getting everything setup, I installed visual studio community 2019 and gitkraken and cloned down my project(which was building and running fine prior to changing computers) and I'm running into an issue. It's a game dev project using MonoGame.
These are the errors that I'm receiving currently. I've tried multiple versions of MonoGame including 3.0, 3.5, and 3.7. I've attempted to reinstall redistributables, I've cloned into multiple directories, I've attempted building a different project(a fork of the same project that I've worked on more recently on my previous pc). I have a friend that works on the project with me, he was able to clone into a new directory and build immediately. I've attempted building the content package in the MGCB manually and am also running into an issue where it's not finding a specific font file(that i've verified is installed on my computer, and also tried dropping in the correct directory for building, but have had no luck there. However, I feel like this is a separate issue, but it may provide some insight to someone who is more experienced than I.)
Ideally, this project should clone down and build just fine on a fresh install. It always has before, but there's something going on here that I'm not sure about. I've tried several different things and have hit a wall. There isn't much online about this specific issue that I've seen, so if anyone has any ideas I'm all ears. Thanks.
I figured out the issue. It was something simple as usual, a product of my own stupidity. When I first downloaded the font, I extracted and right click > install. So the font was installed on the PC. I spent a couple days on this issue, and at some point when trying to reinstall the font there was a new option that hadn't been there before called 'Install for all users' with the shield icon next to it. Previously, I'd only had the option to 'Install' without the shield icon. Not sure exactly what the difference is between these two options showing up, but once I clicked 'Install for all users', the issue was solved. So I guess initially the font was only installed for my specific user account. I'm not sure why this is an issue or why the option to install for everyone wasn't available previously, but this is what solved the problem.
Change the Build Action on the "Content-> Content.mgcb" file to "none" or "ignore"(I can't remember which). This will allow the game to build successfully.
Here is a temporary work around to allow you to continue development:
If the XNB files are not properly building in the Pipeline tool, you can copy them(from an older build or compile them on another machine) into the output directory, Content directory under the directory containing the .exe file, manually.

UWP App Won't Start

I have a UWP app. I'm using Visual Studio 2017 15.4.1. The UWP app is a store app and has been deployed to the Microsoft Store. My app was working fine in the store, and it was also working fine when I hit play in Visual Studio. Then recently, an isolated storage issue started occurring so I went in to the app in "Apps & Features" and hit Advanced Options -> Reset. Somehow this has fried my app installation on my machine. Our app no longer shows up as an installed app, and when I try to install the app from the store, I get an error with a code of 0x80073CF9. So, I can't uninstall, or reinstall on my machine. I've tried running sfc /scannow etc. to find out what's wrong, but nothing seems to help.
This wouldn't even worry me too much, but I can't even develop right now because when I try to run the app from Visual Studio, I get this error:
In order to debug this project, you must consume it from a Windows
Store app project that creates a package and is marked as the Startup
Project
I'm getting this error in the output window from the build
4>DEP0700: Registration of the app failed. [0x80073CF9] Another user
has already installed an unpackaged version of this app. The current
user cannot replace this with a packaged version. The conflicting
package is [APP NAME] and it was published
by CN=[Publisher].
What did I do wrong?
You can use Get-appxpackage -allusers *<appname>* | Remove-AppxPackage
The allusers option is important here.
You can also try to manually remove the content of the application cache folder in C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Packages\. If you have one locked file here, the whole deployment will fail.

Visual Studio 2015 Update 2: Registration of the app failed. (0x80073cf6)

I'm experiencing the Registration of the app failed. (0x80073cf6) error.
What I've tried so far:
Delete the package in AppData (I can't find it anymore there, the package family name has been changed to my associated store listing).
Repair Visual Studio
Acquire developer license
Make a new project (that works, for the 1st time, after that same error).
It happens on my phone (950XL, developer unlocked) and on my machine.
I can't debug my app in anyway now.
I'm on Update 2 of VS 2015
In the question, the project-type is not specified, but I think, it can be the same problem, I have...
I have installed VS2015 Update 3 RC and created a Xamarin.Forms shared project from template (without any changes in the project).
Same error for UWP- and Windows 8.1 projects, where Windows Phone 8.1 works in the emulator.
I store my project on a network-drive (what never was a problem with earlier .forms-projects, that have not included UWP- and Windows 8.1-projects).
I have changed the Output path from \bin\debug\ (=sub-directory of the project folder on the network drive) to C:\Temp\Debug and... the error has gone.
So.. it seems as (at least Xamarin-) UWP- and Windows8.1-projects have a problem, when the output-directory points to a network drive.
This is not a final solution for projects on a network-drive, but a workaround to be able to develop until the real problem can be solved (I hope for some changes in VS or a clear advice, what to change regarding the rights of the network drive to solve the problem from MS).
<Properties>
<DisplayName>Name</DisplayName>
<PublisherDisplayName>Other Name</PublisherDisplayName>
<Logo>Assets\StoreLogo.png</Logo>
In the app manifest file, change the "Name" to anything else. And it'll work.
That is it.

WPF application doesn't run on another computer

I created a new WPF project. I copied the built .exe file onto another computer and tried to run the application. But nothing happened. It was just loading. Nothing more.
All my WPF projects do this thing.
What am I doing wrong? Has anyone any idea?
Edit: For somebody in the future: the question might not be clear. What I meant was that I created a simple WPF application with nothing in it and tried to run the application on another computer. I wasn't able to make it run. Just nothing appeared. I figured out that the Avast Free Antivirus was causing this problem. When the antivirus is turned off, it runs as expected. Even though it is no solution, at least we know, what was causing the problem.
You are probably missing the dot net libraries on the target machine.
For quick fix, download the dot net framework distributable for the .net version you compiled against and install it on the target machine. Here is 4.5.1 for example.
For actual distribution, look at creating an installer that will ensure all dependencies are installed with the application. InstallShield has a limited edition which may be included with your edition of visual studio
Try publishing your application using click once. You can do this by right clicking on your project > Publish > Specify the location to publish your application > Finish. Copy the files inside the Published folder to another computer and try installing by click the setup.
Note: The instructions I said above only works if you only have basic functions on your app. If your application uses SQL Server, you need to install it first on the computer that you will be installing your application in.
For your reference. How to: Publish a ClickOnce Application using the Publish Wizard

Xamarin - Android - Visual Studio - The application could not be started

I was working on an Android project using Xamarin in Visual Studio 2012. I recently upgraded from an HDD to a SSD so I reinstalled Windows and all of my programs.
After cloning my git repository and trying to run the application on my device, I have not been able to get it to run. I was able to start a new hello world project and I got that to run, but I can't get this project to run.
This is what the error says:
The application could not be started. Ensure that the application has been installed to the target device and has a launchable activity (MainLauncher = true).
Additionally, check Build->Configuration Manager to ensure this project is set to Deploy for this configuration.
I have searched for a solution to this issue but have been unable to find anything that worked.
I solved the issue. Somehow the application still existed on my device even though it did not show up in my applications and I needed to remove it.
The solution was to find an old APK that I had emailed and I installed that. Then I uninstalled the application and deployed it again from Visual Studio. This time it worked.
You can read more here: https://forums.xamarin.com/discussion/8501/install-failed-update-incompatible
EDIT (March 13th, 2017):
Seems a lot of people found this answer useful so I decided I should update it with an alternate method to uninstall the app if you don't have access to an old version.
As Atul Chaudhary and Nestel mentioned, you can open up your adb command prompt and run adb uninstall <com.your.application.package.name>. If there are any remnants of your application which remain this should get rid of them.
Renamed Application name.
Added Package name.
App. started working on Emulator, Renamed application again, app. continued to run.
Note: Resetting device, un-installing the app. and related runtime etc. from settings did not work for me.
Hope this helps someone.
Running this command from the adb shell solved it for me:
adb shell pm uninstall -k com.packagename
To access the adb shell from Visual Studio Tools -> Android -> Android Adb Command Prompt.
Very interesting error, seems like Visual Studio is unable to unistall the previous version completely.
Obviously the OP figured out the issue to their problem but I still wanted to post an answer relating to an issue I had with the same error message. I am using Visual Studio (within Parallels) and attempting to debug the app on a Xamarin Android Player instance (which is running on my Mac).
I kept getting this error and realized that a different, more helpful, error message was showing up in the Build Output saying that I was not supporting the correct architecture.
Heading into the Android Project Properties -> Android Options -> Advanced -> and checking x86 finally allowed my to successfully deploy to the Xamarin Android Player.
The ADB approach does not worked for me.
I did not want to factory reset my phone nor uninstall my apps so I have managed to deploy by changing the package.
Right click on your Droid project
Select Properties
Got to Application Manifest
Change the Package name
Re-deploy your project
Hope this helps
I had the same error today, trying to run Xamarin Android-app on Xamarin Android Player. To fix it I needed to check the "x86" box at the "Supported architectures" section. So you might want check this section.
I experienced this problem when there was not sufficient memory on device. After "successful" deployment the app was missing even from the app list in Settings. Deleting through adb gave me Failure which indicated it was not installed. In Output log in VS2015 I was having the same message as OP. Finally it worked after I cleaned up about 50-100 MB, even though in App Settings it showed me that there were 500 MB free. I tried different solutions (deleting through adb, cleaning, building then deploying) but only cleaning up worked.
adb uninstall did the trick. The strange thing is that even if you run the command to list all app that are installed it will not show up but if you run the uninstall command with ur package name which should be ur project name or name that you have assigned you will get the success result which means it got uninstalled and to check that if run the uninstall command again with same package name u will get failure command. Then deploying ur package again should work
In my case issue was two activities were Launcher activities,so I made one of them Launcher activity.
You can remove
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter> from AndroidManifest.xml file or
MainLauncher = true from .cs Activity file attribute
If you've reinstalled everything you may have to set the configuration manager back up in VS.
In Visual Studio: Build -> Configuration Manager -> Put a check in the "Deploy" box.
I've managed to solve it by wiping user data from emulator.
From AVD Manager, when you start the emulator, check "Wipe user data" and your emulated device will behave like new.
Problem itself appeared after updating to Android SDK Tools 25.1.3.
I could not get this working, initially. Tried removing everything (Mono runtime, app, etc.), but to no avail.
What did work was renaming my package, which was fine in my case since I haven't release my apk yet. Some ghost version is obviously still stored on my unit.
Renaming Application Name and Package Name (go to Manifest settings) where helped to resolve this issue
The only alternatives which help me solve this were the following:
From the Xamarin Android Studio home page (where all devices are displayed), click on the "three-dots" button and then Factory Reset.
OR
Install a new device and deploy your app there.
Whenever I encounter this problem, I publish the app and install in manually using
adb install "<path to apk file>"
in the Android Adb Command Prompt.
Hopefully, a fix is out soon, according to
https://github.com/xamarin/xamarin-android/issues/3727
Happened to me today, after updating a project from Git and running in Android Emulator. Uninstalling the app from emulator, performing Clean and Rebuild in VS and instaling the application again helped.

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