Visual Studio 2010 Macro problem - Quit Working all together

Question

I built a macro today in VS.. testing as I went, and it worked great. I proceeded to build another, but accidentally pasted it into EnvironmentVariables Module... I removed it, and saved, but now no Macros that I create work. I tried the built-in samples, such as insert date, and it worked, but nothing custom works.

Thanks, Ben

Answer 1

Not to steal anybody's thunder, but I was unable to add comments as I'm apparently considered a person of ill repute, so I'll just add this information as a separate answer.

The page cited in a previous (correct and very helpful) answer by David Coster has since been updated to reflect the fact that it is no longer necessary to uninstall the offending update. Macros can be re-enabled by changing some config files, as described below:

Update (February 18): To restore Visual Studio 2010 macros functionality without removing Windows updates, you can add the AllowDComReflection configuration setting to vsmsvr10.exe.config, vsaenv10.exe.config and devenv.exe.config files (note, you need to run your editor with admin rights for correct modification of these files):

<configuration>
    <runtime>
        <AllowDComReflection enabled="true"/>

On a 64-bit Windows machine default paths to these files are:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VSA\9.0\VsaEnv\vsmsvr10.exe.config"
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VSA\9.0\VsaEnv\vsaenv10.exe.config"
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe.config"

Each of these files already has the runtime section, you just need to add the line.

Visit the page cited for full details.

Answer 2

An update on this: in Feb 2014 Microsoft released an update that broke macros in Visual Studio products. After reading the following link I uninstalled KB2898869 on my Win 7 x64 machine and they are working again.

See this link for the full story.

Here is a bit from that link:

Installing recent February 11, 2014 Windows updates breaks Visual Studio 2010 macros functionality. Macros just don’t run any more without an error message. More specifically, it is MS14-009 update “Vulnerabilities in .NET Framework Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (2916607)” (rated as Important) breaks macros. And more specifically it is the Elevation of Privilege part of this update.

            .NET 4.5.1  .NET 4.5    .NET 4
Windows 8.1 KB2898871       
Windows 8   KB2898870   KB2898865   
Windows 7   KB2898869   KB2898864   KB2898855
Windows XP              KB2898855