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Context: Toshiba Satellite L75D-A7280 64bit, Windows 10 Home 64bit

How long should I expect 2015 to spend repairing itself? It's been over 8 hours and we haven't moved beyond "Microsoft Build Tools 14.0 (x86)" for the better part of that time.

I'm tempted to delete the Visual Studio folder tree, run CCleaner on the registry to at least partially cleanup the mess, and then install from scratch.

NOTE

Killing the repair will require a reboot. If one tries to uninstall immediately after a killed repair, a message comes up about an install in progress. Rebooting seems to be the only thing to clear whatever flags have been left by the repair process.

LATER THAT SAME DAY

Killed it. Rebooted. Found vs_community.exe. Entered the command vs_community.exe /uninstall /force. It has been sitting doing not a lot for a few hours apart from 'Applying: Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Diagnostic Tools - x86'. Those five little dots come in, join up, and fly away again, over and over again. And again. And again. ...

A COUPLE OF DAYS LATER

I've stumbled on a way of speeding up the uninstall. If you reboot, Visual Studio remembers where you were in the uninstall and picks up again where you left off, but one uninstall subtask further on.

AFTER THAT

Today I was going to reboot again then cancelled out of it. Suddenly the uninstall started moving quickly. A while after that it had stalled again. So again I went to reboot and then cancelled it. Again the uninstall picked up speed and worked through more subtasks. Now the blue "Applying" progress bar is 3/4 through rather than sitting for days at 1/10.

MANY MONTHS LATER

VS2015 also takes hours, maybe days, to uninstall. I'm removing it ahead of a VS2017 install. I started the process maybe 36 hours ago and it's not finished yet.

bugmagnet
  • 469

4 Answers4

2

The setup is indeed creating problem. Tried to uninstall + repair, all behave the same. My environment is Win 10 x64. So until there is a proper update from Microsoft, we have to suffer like this.

The install/repair/uninstall time depends on the machine specifications only when it is going smoothly (in the ideal case). In case some thing(s) is conflicting, the setup simply stuck at initial stages for hrs.

This canceled sign-out as suggested by @Joe indeed pushed the progress bar, but I have to repeat it like a dozen of times. Still no better solution found. Also, After passing all of the components, in the final step of house keeping it again stuck for all night. Canceled Sign-out was no more effective. Eventually I have to force close the setup. BUT all this patience paid in the end, Visual Studio started properly without the warning of incomplete installation.

PS: at the time of writing, Microsoft FixIt, that is supposed to repair the blocked install/uninstall, does not support Windows 10 (check the screenshot below)

PPS: Some users suggested to turn off the antivirus/antimalware program in these situations. You can try this on your own risk.

Fixit Page screenshot

BiLaL
  • 123
2

It sounds like something is indeed blocking the repair process as well as the uninstall process. Since visual studio is quite large (if you selected everything to install, it is indeed very large), it will take it a bit of time to repair itself depending on what is installed and what exactly is wrong with it.

My first thoughts of why it is hanging, could be due that your hard drive is powering down from lack of activity, part of windows way of saving power especially on laptops, also could be because its going to sleep as well, both of which is known to cause problems with programs that take a while to do things. So you can try going into the power options and then to the advanced power options and either set to power down the hard drive to be a higher time or set it to never same with sleep.

If you have an Anti-virus and/or Anti-Malware programs, then its quite possible that these are affecting the repair/uninstall process as they are most likely causing a read/write lock on the files that visual studio is trying to modify or repair etc. Some anti-viruses and anti-malware programs scan files as they are created or written to which causes problems with some programs. So try disabling these during the time of fixing visual studio.

If you still can't do anything, an alternative would be to forcefully remove the visual studio by deleting the folder from where it is installed at, usually in program files or program files x86, then go to control panel click uninstall and it should say its already uninstalled or it says there is an error would you like to remove it from the programs list, click yes. Then with a reboot, you should be able to install visual studio again. Not the most ideal way of reinstalling a program but it does work most of the time.

Another alternative to try would be to run Microsoft FixIt program and see if it resolves any problems as well.

Frostalf
  • 543
2

Had the same problem. After blocking the antivir activity, the speed of uninstalling raised about 100-1000 times. It is still slow, yes, but I see as the progress bar moves.

Gangnus
  • 167
0

I just cancelled a "sign out" onmy windows 10 machine and the uninstall progress bar jumped a WHOLE BUNCH.

:) BLEEPING computers! :)

Joe Codeswell user601770
  • 129