VisualKernel does not appear in VS2015 after re-installing

[fstuetz]

I uninstalled VisualKernel v2.1 and VS community 2015 completely.
After reinstalling (first VS2015 then VK) VK appears in my installed Programs, but not in the VS2015 IDE.
E.g., the VK project templates do not appear.

[support]

Hi,

Please try running devenv.exe /ResetSkipPkgs. If this does not help, please double-check that the “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Sysprogs\VisualKernel\extension.vsixmanifest” file exists and is not corrupt. If this does not help either, please try running devenv.exe /log and check the ActivityLog.xml file for messages related to VisualKernel.

[fstuetz]

Hi and thanks so far!

I checked the file extension.vsixmanifest, it seems ok.
The log entries do not show any problem. They state  “Successfully loaded extension…”  and “Extension is enabled…”

But still there is no VisualKernel support in VS2015.

Another hint about my activity history:
I had installed VS2017. This caused several problems in VS2015. As a result I had to uninstall both VS2017 and VS2015.

So I still hope very much that someone can help me.

[support]

Hi,

Thanks for checking this. If the extension is loaded, please check if it appears under Tools->Extensions and Updates and whether the Help->About VisualKernel command is visible. If yes, please let us know what exact functionality is broken.

[fstuetz]

Hi,

VisualKernel does appear in Tools->Extensions and Updates, but not in the Help menu.

 

[support]

Hi,

This could be caused by some strange interference with VisualGDB. Please try uninstalling VisualGDB and see if VisualKernel menus reappear. If yes, please let us know your VisualGDB and VisualKernel versions.

[fstuetz]

Hi,

VisualGDB was currently not installed. It had been before I uninstalled and re-installed VS2015 and VisualKernel.
So today I tried installing VisualGDB 5.2r8 too.
The behaviour was the same – both  appear in Tools->Extensions and Updates, but not in the Help menu or project templates.
After uninstalling VisualGDB again the situation was as before.

The VisualKernel Version is: 2.1r2
I had 2 versions of VisualGDB in use. The first one a few months ago was: 5.1r6.
I tried updating to 5.2r8. But I got errors when starting VS2015. So I had to return to 5.1r6 again.

[support]

OK, this is starting to look like a corrupt VS installation. Please try installing VisualKernel from another user account and check if it works. If it does, please try renaming/removing per-user Visual Studio folders and registry keys so that VS can reinitialize its environment and then reinstall VisualKernel again.

[fstuetz]

Indeed, this seems to be the problem.

After installing VisualKernel as new user, it worked.
However, I could not fix the problem for the standard user which I would prefer to use. Deleting these folders did not help:
C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0
C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\VisualKernel

Concerning the per-user registry entries of VisualStudio: I don’t know where they are. Can you give me a hint?

Thank you so far!

[support]

Hi,

You don’t need to delete the VisualKernel folders/keys, only the Visual Studio ones:

• C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0
• C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0_Config

We recommend renaming the folders/keys before you confirm that it solves the problem in case you accidentally delete something critical.

[fstuetz]

Hi,

Thank you very much! Renaming the registry entries solved my problem.

Are your developers interested in the buggy contents of
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0 and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0_Config
that caused the problem?

[support]

Hi,

Unfortunately, VS registry can get corrupt in many different ways, so one specific instance won’t be of much help. You could try getting a diff of the .reg files from the old and the new key and quickly check if there is anything obviously wrong there (or send the diff to us if the amount of changes is relatively small), but unless it gets obvious from the first glance, investigating it further won’t be worth the time.

[Author]

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