Cloud Explorer - cannot access development Blob Containers

Question

I am developing with Azure storage locally using VS2015. I created and accessed my development storage blob container fine. I upload three images and have code to calculate the size of the images.

For some unknown reason, I cannot expand the Blob Containers node in Cloud Explorer any more. I.e. Cloud explorer > Storage Accounts > (Development) > Blob Containers. Doing so results in the following error message:

Cloud Explorer has encountered an unexpected error: Unable to retrieve child resources.

It has been working fine in the past, so not sure what's changed. I know there are containers inside and I can seemly create one but then it doesn't show up in the list.

It works for live Azure storage accounts but not development.

Though I can still write code against this Development container - so it's there and functional but Cloud Explorer just not listing the containers i.e. no access to view files / upload file through VS UI.

Answer 1

Here are my steps to resolve

1. Uninstall Cloud Explorer via Extensions and Updates
2. Restart VS
3. Update the Cloud Explorer in Extensions and Updates (that apparently wasn't uninstalled)
4. Experience the catastrophic behaviour (very slow)
5. Restart VS
6. Fixed (seemingly)
7. Look into Extensions and Updates to see Cloud Explorer is disabled
8. Everything is fixed.

Update (29/07/2018)

If you are having trouble launching Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer (Development) e.g. blob storage and get the error message "Unable to retrieve child resources" followed by details of "A network error occurred...ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:10002" then simply (install and) run the Azure Storage Emulator.