Can't apply KB3165756 to Visual Studio 2015 Professional

Question

I have a licensed version of Microsoft's Visual Studio 2015 Professional operating on Windows 10 Enterprise. The Help/About displays this, in part:

Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2015
Version 14.0.25424.00 Update 3
Microsoft .NET Framework
Version 4.6.01038

Installed Version: Professional

Visual Studio has been pestering me to apply KB3165756 for more than a week, so as to update things from 14.0.25424.0 to 14.0.25425.01. I select the link and it downloads vs14-kb3165756.exe to my computer. I start this program and run it. After a short delay (and getting through a few security prompts), the program aborts with this display:

I click on the link to examine the log file (the common issues and workarounds link is completely worthless so far as I'm able to see) and I get quite a long laundry list of errors near the bottom. This is the error log file I get.

I have re-tried this any number of times, including completely shutting down the computer and rebooting and then re-trying the operation. It always fails at the same point. It also always adds the point about "user cancelled installation." But I didn't actually participate. All I did was watch the installation process acquire some files and then fail. Perhaps just a few minutes' time to get there.

(I do have a few add-ons in Visual Studio 2015. I can provide a complete list, if that is needed. Or I can check an item if someone feels it's important to check for particular ones. Most of them are from Microsoft, though. And no, I have not removed them all and tried to go back to the beginning installation process and then re-apply everything in some different order.)

I'd appreciate any productive thoughts about how to get this patch applied. I'm getting to the point of considering a complete uninstall of Visual Studio, a re-install from the original DVD, and then re-application of patches. (But, of course, I'd like to avoid that.)

Answer 1

Even I faced the same issue, which looks like a problem with the online installer of this KB update. I could resolve it by making an offline installer and installing it using the following steps:

1. Download the installer of the KB3165756 from https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt752379.aspx. It is an online installer (A minimal installer VS14-KB3165756.exe of 2.45 MB, which will download the content on the go from internet).
2. Open a command prompt and point to the location where VS14-KB3165756.exe is located.
3. Run the command VS14-KB3165756.exe /layout. It will start a Visual Studio Setup Window asking for the download location where you want to download this. Select and location as the file location of VS14-KB3165756.exe. For example if your VS14-KB3165756.exe is in C:\VS14-KB3165756.exe then select the download location as C:\packages and it will download there.
4. Now, keep your system network disconnected and try to install the VS14-KB3165756.exe and it will take the offline package and install successfully instead of trying to download. For example, if you are running VS14-KB3165756.exe from C:\VS14-KB3165756.exe, then it will look for packages files from C:\packages.