Visual Studio 2015 does not display Errors List window

Question

I'm running Visual Studio 2015 Preview on my machine, and no matter what I try I cannot view the "Errors List" window. I have done the following to try to make the window open:

• Try to open the window from the "View" menu
• Build a project with errors, with the errors window set to auto-display
• Repair the VS 2015 installation
• Open a different solution
• Try to open the window with no solution loaded

I am assuming that this is a bug in the preview version that I am running (14.0.22310.1 DP), but was wondering if there is perhaps a solution that I could try in the meantime to make this work.

Answer 1

I submitted this problem as a bug on Microsoft Connect (https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/1074514/error-list-has-disappeared). The ensuing response solved the issue:

Looking at the data you've provided, I believe you may have hit a known issue with the new Error List in Visual Studio 2015 Preview, which manifests itself when you attempt to double-click at the edge of a column to resize. The resize works, but the next time you restart Visual Studio the error list fails to load.

If you see this problem again, it’s possible to work around it to get your error list back up and running again. This requires editing the registry (which should always be undertaken with caution, after backing up the registry)

The relevant key is HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0\NewTaskList

Follow these steps:

1. Close all running copies of Visual Studio on the affected machine
2. Open RegEdit and locate the relevant key
3. Delete the whole key (it will be regenerated when Visual Studio 2015 Preview re-starts)
4. Re-start Visual Studio 2015, and the Error List should be available again

We have fixed the underlying bug in later builds - watch for new releases of Visual Studio 2015. Thanks for taking the time to try Visual Studio 2015 Preview

Answer 2

I had the same problem with VS 2013. Levi's answer was helpful. I found a registry path \\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\ErrorList and a key of ErrorListScopeFilteringActive. This was set to 1. I changed it to 0 and it solved the problem. (I closed Visual Studio and came back in.)