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I have been having an issue recently with Visual Studio 2015 and the only workaround I can find is opening up the developer command line and executing "devenv.exe /resetuserdata"

That solves the problem (until the next windows update typically brings it back).

I have been trying to troubleshoot this for a while so I can actually determine the root cause but one big issue is that I cannot find any msdn documentation about this command "devenv.exe /resetuserdata"

So that is essentially my question, what does this do? I am trying to figure out what is actually getting reset. Is it registry data? Is there some settings/config files somewhere I am not finding?

Edit: Just to clarify, I understand, in general, what the command will do, however, I am wondering more specifically what it does, I.E. deleting files, registry entries etc.

Mason
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2 Answers2

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It will clear all the user data that you have, like settings from the options menu, and you might need to re-enter your user details / license afterwards.
You can export the settings before you run the command.

The contents of the following directories (and possibly other information) will be deleted:

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\<version>
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\<version>
Andrew Keeton
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Idanushka
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  • It will delete some files that VS uses for settings – Idanushka Dec 14 '17 at 23:04
  • thank you for taking the time to try to help me, can you please tell me what files those are? – Mason Dec 14 '17 at 23:07
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    I think that it's `%APPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio` but I am not sure for 100% – Idanushka Dec 14 '17 at 23:08
  • thank you, this is just what I needed! Looks like I was missing this getting deleted somewhere in my troubleshooting and then opening vs again which regenerates it. In case others need it, can you please update your answer with the path %APPDATA%\local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\ as this is the folder which gets deleted. Thanks again, I feel blind i missed it! – Mason Dec 14 '17 at 23:32
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    %APPDATA%\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\ also gets deleted – Mason Dec 14 '17 at 23:50
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There is an option to save your old settings if you use the wizard in tools/import and export settings wizard and reset all settings. It is the same procedure as the resetuserdata command.

Carlos
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