16

I'm trying to develop extensions for Visual Studio and I'm going through some articles.

One key point of VS extension development is to reset experimental instance of Visual Studio, which I am having problem with.

For example, here is written that I should use following command to reset it (it is recommended also in Microsoft docs):

CreateExpInstance /Reset /VSInstance=12.0 /RootSuffix=Exp

I run command line and navigate to CreateExpInstance location and run this command (I tried with various versions: 12.0, 14.0, etc.).

However, I keep getting such response:

The Visual Studio Experimental instance directory C:\Users\Mi\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0Exp does not exist. CreateExpInstance: warning : The Visual Studio directory C:\Users\Mi\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0 does not exist. Created directory C:\Users\Mi\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0Exp\Extensions. Press any key to continue . . .

Moreover, executing this keeps creating new experimental instances in my %localappdata%/Microsoft/VisualStudio directory

What am I doing wrong? Why my instance isn't getting reset? Or maybe this is how it should be?

RBT
  • 24,161
  • 21
  • 159
  • 240
Michał Turczyn
  • 32,028
  • 14
  • 47
  • 69
  • The error message is for VS2010, version 10.0. Doesn't jive well with your CreateExpInstance command. Consider using the Start menu shortcut. – Hans Passant Mar 02 '19 at 14:17

2 Answers2

33

There are several shortcuts for each Visual Studio version that you can run like this:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Visual Studio 2017\Microsoft Visual Studio SDK\Tools\Reset the Visual Studio 2017 Experimental Instance.lnk
RBT
  • 24,161
  • 21
  • 159
  • 240
Sergey Vlasov
  • 26,641
  • 3
  • 64
  • 66
12

Visual complement to Sergey Vlasov's excellent answer:

enter image description here

silkfire
  • 24,585
  • 15
  • 82
  • 105