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I installed VS2012 Premium from our MSDN subscription and it was working fine the first couple of days but then I installed a few extensions I can't now start VS2012 and it gives the error:

Faulting application name: devenv.exe, version: 11.0.50727.1, time stamp: 0x5011ecaa
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 6.1.7601.17725, time stamp: 0x4ec49b8f
Exception code: 0xc0000374
Fault offset: 0x000ce6c3
Faulting process id: 0xee8
Faulting application start time: 0x01cd89bb777fc1dd
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll

I'm running it on Windows 7 64 bit.

I've tried to repair, uninstall and install again and nothing. I tried to restore to a previous restore system point but nothing.

The extensions I installed I can remember:

  • VS10x Code Map
  • VSCommands
  • Visual SVN
  • Nuget manager

(all the above my colleagues have it too and it works fine for them) and:

  • Web Essentials
  • Visual Studio Color Theme Editor
  • SlowCheetah
  • Mobile Ready HTML5

Questions are:

  1. Anyone else has had this problem?
  2. Is there a way I can uninstall extensions from a command line or software? (I removed the extensions folder but that doesn't do anything)
  3. Can I repair the "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll"? Is it really a problem with this dll?

I haven't been able to find any similar issue in other versions and because VS2012 is new doesn't seem to be much information either.

David Aleu
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  • This post gives a solution: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vssetup/thread/d848776a-b00f-4311-ab09-3a8777462968 but for me it gives me another error now:Faulting module path: C:\Windows\syswow64\KERNELBASE.dll – David Aleu Sep 03 '12 at 11:09
  • I had this problem caused by the Gemini Visual Studio 2012 Connector. Everything is fine until I try and open the Gemini window, whereupon VS crashes. It couldn't start because I had that window pinned open. jimbo elrod's answer below worked for me. – john_cat Jun 21 '13 at 09:50

10 Answers10

54

It is working now!. This is what I did:

Following the suggestion here:

  1. Removed the key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers]. VS2012 loading but then crashing before I could do anything else (error in C:\Windows\syswow64\KERNELBASE.dll)
  2. Then I removed:
    • [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0]
    • [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0_Config] and started again and is working fine.

I obviously lost all my settings but no big deal as I can now do some work! :)

devOp
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David Aleu
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21

Running devenv.exe with the /SafeMode argument would probably have also fixed it.

devOp
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JTallsmith
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    This should really be the approved answer. Try it before blowing away parts of the registry. It works at least some of the time and you won't lose your settings. – Ivan Karajas Jun 02 '15 at 00:46
7

I opened a different .sln and then went back to my faulting project and it loaded! Maybe something with a faulty close-down of the project

Mukul Goel
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jimbo elrod
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2

Removing all VS settings is a bit harsh unless all visual studio instances crash immediately.

What probably happens when you encounter this is that Visual Studio opens the designer window that caused it to crash in the first place... this is often an extension, but it might also just be a bug in VS. For example: I sometimes experience this when working with LINQ-TO-SQL and have the database-schema designer open.

The easiest resolution is to simply remove the SUO file with the solution settings, and open the SLN. You can then do whatever you want, except go to the file with the issue- once you know what that file is, you can fix it (f.ex. in the case of a DBML by simply removing it and regenerating it)

  • I had this problem in VS 2015; it would crash on startup whether I launched as an administrator or not. I ended up double-clicking a different solution file than the one I last used before VS crashed, and VS opened up fine. – John Craft Oct 16 '15 at 20:03
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Just copy all dte*.olb files, from C:\Program Files (X86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSEnv to C:\Program Files X86\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE.

From https://mycodepad.wordpress.com/2013/12/07/visual-studio-2012-4-run-as-administrator-the-application-cannot-start-error/

George Kosmidis
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2

Simply running as Administrator seemed to be enough to get it running for me, at least temporarily.

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    firing up VS 2012 as admin also helped me but before that I did an **"sfc /scannow"** from the command prompt. (and it did found some defects and corrected those) – gericooper Jun 19 '14 at 11:04
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I had a similar ntdll.dll issue ... C++ updating SQL Server ...

I fixed it by using the SQL Server OBDC connection rather than the SQL Server Native Client 11.0

We're trying to see why as it is working for some updates and not others ... but it works all the time for reading.

Kuba hasn't forgotten Monica
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0

All the above solutions didn't work for me, but this one work.

Copy dte*.olb from C:\Program Files (X86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSEnv to C:\Program Files X86\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE.

http://www.clausconrad.com/blog/the-application-cannot-start-running-visual-studio-as-administrator

William
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First launch devenv.exe with the /SafeMode option, then Uncheck the Allow macros to run from "Enviroment->Add-in/Macros Security" and test!

László Papp
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JemoGlemo
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The problem is due to path variable. setting path variable in Environmental variables to below 2048 characters worked for me.

Kishor Jha
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