{"id":2913,"date":"2009-10-28T22:46:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-28T22:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/2009\/10\/28\/how-to-fix-the-application-cannot-start-error\/"},"modified":"2019-02-14T15:42:12","modified_gmt":"2019-02-14T23:42:12","slug":"how-to-fix-the-application-cannot-start-error","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/visualstudio\/how-to-fix-the-application-cannot-start-error\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Fix “The application cannot start” Error"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Weston Hutchins<\/strong> \u2013 Program Manager, Visual Studio Shell Team
Short Bio<\/strong>: I started at Microsoft as an intern in 2005 and have been working in Visual Studio ever since.  I\u2019m currently a PM on the VS Shell Team.  No, not the \u201cIsolated<\/a>\u201d or \u201cIntegrated<\/a>\u201d Shell, but the core VS IDE \u2013 it\u2019s UI and services.  Prior to my current duties, I was the SKU manager for the Visual Studio Express products. Outside of work, I\u2019m an avid football fan<\/a>, love winter sports, and always enjoy some quality mac and cheese.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Introduction
<\/u><\/strong>So, you\u2019re sitting on your couch and all of sudden\u2026epiphany!  You\u2019ve got the solution to the code problem you\u2019ve been working on for a few days!  You go to fire up Visual Studio, and instead of being treated with a new instance of VS you are presented with this — the dreaded error: \u201cThe application cannot start.\u201d:<\/p>\n

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\u201cWell, it was working fine this morning!\u201d you say.  \u201cWhat happened!?\u201d<\/p>\n

I wish I had a quick, easy, one-line answer for why this happens, but as with most things in life, it isn\u2019t that simple.  There are a number of scenarios that will cause the IDE to get into this state, which makes diagnosing this issue rather non-trivial.  When Visual Studio is launched, the initialization code branches off and begins to perform a number of tasks such as reading the window layout, importing the saved settings, loading a number of .dlls, creating the main window, etc.  If any one of these operations encounters a critical exception from which it cannot recover (which means VS won\u2019t be able to initialize properly), an error is raised and the user is presented with \u201cThe application cannot start.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, you may be asking, \u201cWell the least you could do is give me some exception message that would make debugging this easier, right?\u201d  Unfortunately, no.  Because of the managed to native interop on the initialization thread, all the code gets back is an HRESULT; it loses its error context.  There are a few alternative approaches that we are investigating for RTM around providing a more meaningful error message.<\/p>\n

Now that I\u2019ve given you the background, what do you do if you hit this?  We\u2019ll start with the most common case, at least for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Issue
<\/u><\/strong>In Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2<\/a>, there are two straightforward ways to get into this state.  Both of these issues have been fixed for RTM<\/strong>, and, fortunately, there are workarounds for Beta 2.<\/p>\n

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  1. The first issue is importing a non-TrueType font from a previous version of Visual Studio.  This was already covered by Brittany in her excellent blog post<\/a>. <\/li>\n
  2. The second way to get in this state is by a corrupted window profile \u2013 the file that persists your IDE window state.  If you have floating<\/strong> tool windows (e.g., drag off Solution Explorer to another monitor or show the Find dialog), minimize Visual Studio, and then close Visual Studio from the minimized state, on the next launch you will hit this error.  <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The Workaround
    <\/u><\/strong>To workaround these issues, you\u2019ll need to reset your settings file.  NOTE:<\/strong> The IDE will be reset to its default state and all customizations will be lost.  If you have customizations that you want to save, please copy CurrentSettings.vssettings <\/strong>under \u201c%USERPROFILE%DocumentsVisual Studio 2010Settings<\/font>\u201d to another location.  <\/p>\n

    If you\u2019re using a non-Express SKU:<\/p>\n

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    1. Start Menu->Run (or Windows Key + R for the keyboard savvy) <\/li>\n
    2. Type \u201cdevenv \/resetuserdata<\/font>\u201d.  The issue should now be fixed. <\/li>\n
    3. If you wish to reimport your old settings, go to Tools->Import and Export Settings, select \u201cImport selected environment settings and browse to the .vssettings file you saved. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      If you\u2019re using an Express SKU your steps will be a bit different:<\/p>\n

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      1. Start Menu->Run (or Windows Key + R for the keyboard savvy) <\/li>\n
      2. Depending on the SKU installed, type the following:\n