Visual Studio 2010 package did not load correctly for uninstalled extesions

Question

During visual studio startup I get lots of annoying dialogs about extensions package loading errors. All the extensions that fail to load are those I uninstalled.

I checked all the places mentioned in this article (Bootstrapping of VS packages and VSIX extensions in VS2010) and none of the extensions I get error for is there.

Is there somewhere else I can check?

I would "just" like to see where visual studio finds these references and kindly delete them all :)

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I found this folder in the windows registry:

HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-3990449039-760197492-1239349315-1121\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0_Config\Packages

It contains all the reference to extensions visual studio tries to load (mostly pointing to HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-3990449039-760197492-1239349315-1121\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0_Config\InstalledProducts subfolders).

I just renamed the folder of the extensions I did remove and I do not see load errors anymore.

I'm sure this could cause some side effects so is anyone aware of a better way to avoid visual studio trying to load uninstalled extensions?

Answer 1

This is the correct answer:

1. Close Visual Studio.
2. Backup, and then delete Visual Studio's AppData folder. For example:
   • Visual Studio 2010:
     %AppData%\..\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0
   • Visual Studio 2012:
     %AppData%\..\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0
   • Visual Studio 2013:
     %AppData%\..\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0
3. Restart Visual Studio and enjoy.