visual studio 2010: the application data folder for visual studio cannot be created

Question

I just installed visual studio 2010 on my win7 32 bit computer and i get the following message when I start it:

"the application data folder for visual studio cannot be created"

I had this same version of visual studio on my xp sp3 computer and it worked fine. I googled for various solutions but nothing worked. I tried to run:

"%programfiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" /setup

and to edit the [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders] AppData entry (but it was already okay). I tried to run as administrator.

Is there any other fix to this problem?

ps: after I installed visaul studio there was no desktop shortcut, the start menu folder was empty until I added premmisions for myself (I'm already admin...) and after that the start menu shortcit had no icon and didn't work so I had to run visual studion from the installation folders devenv.exe.

Answer 1

It sounds like Visual Studio is having problems creating the following folder

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio

Or one of the sub folders it creates for storing data (10.0 for example). I would first try accessing that directory location or it's parent and make sure that your account has the proper permissions to create folders in that location.

Answer 2

1. Go to your AppData folder (c:\Users\\AppData)
2. Right click, Security tab; click Advanced button.
3. If your username is not in the "Group or user names" list, click the Edit button and add it.
4. Give yourself full control.
5. Make sure your select "apply to all subfolders".
6. Restart Visual Studio.