Visual Studio 2010 Extension Manager crashes

Question

After installing a bunch of extensions to try out I restarted VS 2010 and it started crashing. Unfortunately, it consistently crashes when opening Tools | Extension Manager. Any ideas how to fix and avoid a complete uninstall/reinstall?

Event log has this: Application: devenv.exe Framework Version: v4.0.30319 Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception. Exception Info: System.AggregateException Stack: at System.Threading.Tasks.TaskExceptionHolder.Finalize()

Answer 1

Try using safemode

> devenv.exe /SafeMode

This will start Visual Studio with all add-ins/extensions disabled.

Answer 2

Try renaming the folder that contains the extensions (and thus, temporarily, removing them).

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Extensions

This will show if you have a VS2010 installation problem, or it is due to an extension (or the interaction of two extensions).

If it is VS2010, try an installer repair, if it is the extensions, restore, and remove half and repeat until isolated.