Visual Studio Community 2017 fails to start. Exception: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.TelemetryForPPT

Question

While opening a solution in Visual Studio 2017, I get a popup saying:

An exception has been encountered. This may be caused by an extension.
You can get more information by examining the file '[...]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_ce1eea42\ActivityLog.xml'.

The specified file reports several errors related to assembly Microsoft.VisualStudio.TelemetryForPPT:

System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.TelemetryForPPT, Version=15.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. File name: 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.TelemetryForPPT, Version=15.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' at GoToDef.GoToDefMouseHandlerProvider.GetAssociatedProcessor(IWpfTextView view) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Text.Editor.Implementation.InputController.<UpdateMouseHandlers>b__7_0(IMouseProcessorProvider p) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Text.Utilities.GuardedOperations.InstantiateExtension[TExtension,TMetadata,TExtensionInstance](Object errorSource, Lazy`2 provider, Func`2 getter) WRN: Assembly binding logging is turned OFF. To enable assembly bind failure logging, set the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog] (DWORD) to 1. Note: There is some performance penalty associated with assembly bind failure logging. To turn this feature off, remove the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog]. 

Any suggestion to solve the problem?

Answer 1

PPT stands for Productivity Power Tools. I had the same problem as you have after installing PPT 2017 two days ago. Yesterday this problem went away after I uninstalled PPT. Last night Microsoft created a new version (15.0.2) of PPT 2017, so apparently something was wrong.

I tried to reinstall this new version just now, but in my case some issue is apparently still there, so I disabled all 15 components of PPT again and the problem disappeared again.

Some entries from the errorlog:

LegacySitePackage failed for package [OptionsPagePackage]Source: 'PPTOptionsPage' Description: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.TelemetryForPPT, Version=15.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies. Het systeem kan het opgegeven bestand niet vinden. System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly '

[Update-2017-04-12] After installing version 15.0.4 of PPT 2017 for four of the fifteen components of PPT 2017 this morning, in my case this problem appears to be solved.