NullReferenceException when installing any Extension in VS2019 - visual-studio-2019

I got the exact same problem posted here:
Attempting to Install an extension to VS2019 results in a NullReferenceException
Same error, same log.
But since I cannot comment nor answer and the question has not been answered as of yet, I'm asking again.
I am using VS2019 Community, but I had VS2017 Enterprise at one point. (student license)
Every single extension I tried to install so far has led to this error. For example "Live Share", "Open Command Line", "Github Extension for Visual Studio", "Markdown Editor".
I believe it started with Live Share when suddenly an update wouldn't install for no reason. I guess that was back with VS2017 even. But I cannot recall, I just assume. With the newly installed VS2019 I was never able to install any extension via the in-app Extension feature, nor by downloading with browser and then trying to open it.
What I've tried:
0) Every suggestion by Perry Qian-MSFT
1) Repairing Visual Studio 2019
2) Reinstalling Visual Studio 2019
3) Uninstalling "Live Share"
4) Deleting various Folders or contents thereof:
C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017 (trying to get rid of any remnants)
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\Common7\IDE\Extensions
Next I'll deinstall as much as possible: VS2019 and Installer and try to see what's left, what could have remained that causes such pain in the a***.
But since my internet will be busy with reinstalling afterwards for a while this question goes up now.
Update1: The installer made some problems getting uninstalled. Deinstallation via Windows Software Management failed with an error but it was still removed from the list. Now I've deleted the folder and will try and reinstall the installer. I don't know why I didn't try that before throwing it all over board.
Update2: I decided to start with a simple barebones VS2019 version without any workloads. But it still doesn't work. So back to throwing everything out and looking for the remainder.
Update3: I now tried to delete various folders then reboot and tried to reinstall a barebone VS 2019 Community again. Still same error.
Here's a list:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Unity
C:\Program Files (x86)\NuGet
C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild (except for .\Microsoft\Windows Workflow Foundation)
C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio Services
C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Packages
C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Microsoft Visual Studio
C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio
C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\Visual Studio Setup
C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\vs_installershell
C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\vs-report-problem
C:\Users\Admin\Documents\Visual Studio 2013
C:\Users\Admin\Documents\Visual Studio 2017
C:\Users\Admin\Documents\Visual Studio 2019
Oddly enough my personal settings are still persistent. So these will be my next target. But where are they stored? Any pointers?
Update4: Seems like settings are stored in a cloud, hm. I made a local backup and tried to reset them resulting in yet another error.
Your settings were reset, but there were some errors.
Error 1: An error occurred while importing settings for 'Product Updates' [code 5396].
Was this 'Product Updates' Setting the culprit?
Update5: The settings reset didn't seem to accomplish anything at all.
Update6: So, I've signed out of VS, reinstalled VS2019 again and this time it seems like settings were actually reset. Still no luck. This is getting really frustrating.
That's it. I'm done. Apart from reinstalling Windows 10 I have no clue what could help now. Maybe there was some registry error? I am lost here.

Thanks to #dxiv who made me aware of the InstallCleanup.exe.
I don't know what that tool does additionally to what I did and I cannot tell what was wrong in the first place. But that thing actually helped!
Thanks again!

Related

DotVVM extension install errors on Visual Studio 2019

I'm attempting to install DotVVM in Visual Studio 2019. Right now I can find it when I 'manage extensions' and it downloads and installs without error. However when I restart Visual Studio post installation I get an error stating 'The DotVVM package did not load correctly' and points me to an xml output file. The contents of said file shows:
SetSite failed for package [DotvvmPackage]
Source: System.ComponentModel.Composition
Description: The composition produced multiple composition errors, with 3 root causes. The root causes are provided below. Review the CompositionException.Errors property for more detailed information
No exports were found that match the constraint: ContractName DotVVM.Integration.VisualStudio.Dialogs.DialogFactory RequiredTypeIdentity DotVVM.Integration.VisualStudio.Dialogs.DialogFactory Resulting in: Cannot set import DotVVM.Integration.VisualStudio.VsPackages.DotvvmPackageDependencies.DialogFactory (ContractName='DotVVM.Integration.VisualStudio.DialogFactory') on part DotVVM.Integration.VisualStudio.VsPackages.DotvvmPackageDependencies.Element: DotVVM.Integration.VisualStudio.VsPackages.DotvvmDependencies.DialogFactory (ContractName='DotVVM.Integration.VisualStudio.Dialogs.DialogFactory') DotVVM.Integration.VisualStudio.VsPackages.DotvvmPackageDependencies
No exports were found that match the constraint:
Pretty much the same error except it's talking about 'DotVVM.Integration.VisualStudio.Common.Licensing.ILoginProvider'
No exports were found that match the constraint:*
Same error except it's talking about 'DotVVM.Integration.VisualStudio.Services.CommandService'
Now I have been trying to find other topics and came across many that said to delete (or rename) the '%appData%'/Local/Microsoft/VisualStudio/16.0/ComponentModelCache' folder which I've tried with no luck. Removed it out of every VisualStudio version folders as well. Restarted Visual Studio of course after. That folder did rebuild itself but I got the same error again.
I've also tried uninstalling and reinstalling it as well. Tired with running Visual Studio as an admin for kicks. Even downloaded the DotVVM.Integration.VisualStudio.2019.RTM.vsix file directly (both 4.0.534 and 4.0.539) and installing it that way with no luck.
I also tried fully uninstalling and reinstalling Visual Studio 2019 all together with no luck. I made sure the entire VisualStudio/16.0 folder was also gone between installs.
I have been able to install other extensions alright just to see.
It seems like I'm missing something or some files when it's trying to install, but I can't figure out what. Any ideas?
Turns out my version of Visual Studio was the issue. My cooperate environment locks me to 16.10.2 which is not the latest version. Visual Studio updates claims I'm up to date but I am not.
The version of DotVVM (4.0.539) doesn't support version 16.10.2 of visual studio, hence the error. I did find an older version of DotVVM (2.5.254) that does support that version of visual studio and that worked fine.

Unable to load Visual Studio debugger component (VS 2019)

I keep getting the error mentioned in the title and shown in the attached image. This is on a fresh installation of VS 2019 Community edition and new .NET framework console application project. I have thoroughly googled for the error and tried all solutions I could find online and even contacted Microsoft Support chat, but no solutions have worked so far. I made a forum post on the VS developer community as well but it has been a week and I haven't heard from anyone. I have never experienced this issue before, this happens in any project/solution I open.
This exact is issue reported on the VS developer forum but the answer there was to download the latest version of Visual studio which I do have (16.7.4), yet the error still persists. There are similar issues here on stack
Here are the things that I’ve tried:
Repaired installation
Ran C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\resources\app\layout\InstallCleanup.exe -full
Uninstalled and reinstalled
Restarted PC
Checked if vsdebugeng.impl.dll exists in [VSInstallDir]\Common7\Packages\Debugger\, [VSInstallDir]\Common7\IDE\Remote Debugger\x86\ and [VSInstallDir]\Common7\IDE\Remote Debugger\x64\
Ran VS in safe mode and with administrative privileges
I haven’t tried installing an earlier version of visual studio though, would that be my only solution? Any help would be appreciated, thank you.
Fixed this by formatting my PC from Windows 10 Enterprise edition to Home.

Can't open or create projects: The type initializer for 'MonoDevelop.Projects.MSBuild.MSBuildEvaluationContext' threw an exception

This morning, I found I was unable to create or open any projects on Visual Studio Community for macOS v8.1.1 (build 27) without getting the error...
The project could not be created
The type initializer for 'MonoDevelop.Projects.MSBuild.MSBuildEvaluationContext' threw an exception.
This install of VS has been working for quite some time on this Mac. VS had found and installed some updates recently. This is not a box where I work routinely; it may have last worked successfully a week or so ago.
Here is a screencapture when trying to create a Console app project, for instance. The error occurs when I hit the "Create" button.
I've found a very similar error on a now defunct Bugzilla for the old Xamarin Studio here, which links me to this resolved GitHub issue on MonoDevelop, which is now Visual Studio, from 2017, which is marked Closed and Merged.
I've also found a very similar error report raised as another GitHub issue for MonoDevelop here. No clear resolution there; just a reply that, "Seems like MSBuild is not installed?"
They both suggest MSBuild isn't in the right place, but I'm not sure how I'd fix that.
I have tried uninstalling Visual Studio (by trashing) and removing .NET using sudo rm -rf /usr/local/share/dotnet. This removed .NET, but on reinstall of VS and .NET, the error returns.
Is there a better way to perform a clean install? Is there another way to resolve this issue?
Round 2
Since the issue was MonoDevelop specific, I did a find to find any file with mono in it. I found some stuff like this...
/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/Current/Commands/mono
... in the Frameworks folder, and that looked promising. I've messed with MonoDevelop in the past (remember icsharpcode?), know that it used to be its own, independent, OSS C# IDE, and blasted that Mono.framework folder away.
sudo rm -rf /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/
I also deleted Visual Studio and removed /usr/local/share/dotnet again, then reinstalled .NET and VS with the VS installer.
When I tried to open Visual Studio, I got a different message.
Now we're getting somewhere. I clicked the "Download Mono Framework" button in that dialog and initially tried installing the "Visual Studio" release from the page the button opened, tried reopening VS, and got the same error as before. Strangely, the VS release is 5.18.1.3, and the error message, above, says I need 5.18.1.24+. :thinking-face:
I tried downloading the latest "Stable" release of the mono framework instead, which is version 5.20.1.19.
Visual Studio opens and creates new projects without error, but...
EDIT: That was short lived. I now get a /usr/local/share/dotnet/sdk/2.1.700/Sdks/Microsoft.NET.Sdk/targets/Microsoft.NET.Sdk.targets(5,5): Error MSB4018: The "GenerateDepsFile" task failed unexpectedly.
System.TypeLoadException: Could not load type of field 'Microsoft.NET.Build.Tasks.DependencyContextBuilder:_filteredPackages' (12) due to: Could not resolve type with token 01000025 from typeref ...
error when I try to build the stock console app.
NOTE: There is an official process for deleting Mono I missed, and is better than the quick & dirty rm -rf I tried, above.

Error installing Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2017

I have a problem when I try to reinstall the ODT 2017: I already had it installed, but when I opened Visual Studio and wanted to check the connection it shows the error "The requested .NET Framework data provider is not found. It may not be installed."
I uninstalled it, and then when I wanted to reinstall it, I was amazed at the error that it was still installed, "Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2017 is already installed. Please uninstall and try again."
I don't know if I have a folder or file in a hidden folder...
Okay, I am not exactly sure why this worked but I don't want to mess with it since it is working great right now.
I had tried all the methods of manually removing Oracle software and none of that seemed to work. I started exploring the command line options and was trying to force an uninstall even though it wasn't installed. I was hoping it would clear something out.
From command line I tried:
ODTforVS2017_122010.exe /V /uninstall
However, instead of uninstalling anything, it launched into the normal install. Only this time, it worked! Go figure.
Just in case this had something to do with it... Just before this, I accidentally started the install for the VS 2015 version which started normally. Was really excited until I realized it was the wrong version. Maybe this cleared something out? No idea...
I have to move on and finish before the deadline. I hope this helps you.
Karl
The accepted answer did not work for me, so I had to investigate further. I was able to solve the problem by manually uninstalling the vsix from Visual Studio (using the Visual Studio 2017 Command Prompt):
vsixinstaller /a /u:"Oracle.VsDevTools.15.0"
Then, I simply ran the installer again and it worked.
In my case the issue was that even after my previous uninstall with the wizard, the extension (ODT) still on VS2017 but it was disabled, so i uninstalled it from VS and then installed it again with the wizard

Visual Studio Team Services doesn't get the packages folder for VS 2015 solution

Background:
I have an MVC application recently ported to Visual Studio 2015 Pro
All relevant references are set to Copy Local = True
We are using Visual Studio Team Services (previously Visual Studio Online) for our repository
I am able to compile, publish, and run the application locally without issues
All dlls contained in the \packages folder are not getting committed to Team Services and NuGet isn't fixing this on the other machines.
How do I fix this so everyone else can compile this application?
I have read many "solutions" to this problem, but none have worked. One that seems to fix the issue for many people doesn't work in VS2015 because Microsoft removed the option to automatically restore NuGet packages.
I have searched many other sites, and similar posts on Stack, but none are exactly this issue.
Please help me fix it.

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