Blank entries showing in solution explorer, clicking them causes VS 2015 to crash

[+unabatedshagie Subscriber¹]

I work on around 35/40 different projects, I have one project which when I open it from source control explorer displays blank entries when viewing it in solution explorer. If I click on any of these blank entries in solution explorer visual studio 2015 crashes. This has been happening with both update 1 and update 2 of VS 2015. Can't remember if it happened on vanilla 2015 and I don't have 2013 installed to try with that.

 

I'm able to access all the files in the solution and open them to edit if I browse to then via source control explorer.

 

I've tried disabling all my extensions, I've tried running studio in safe mode. Still happens. I've also tried nuking my profile by running devenv.exe /ResetUserData but it still happens when I open this one particular project.

 

Has anyone came across this before or know how to fix it?

 

The only thing I've found that fixes it is to delete the .vs folder in the project and re-open the solution. This fixes it for a while but then I can open the solution again and there are blank entries again.

[DevTech]

Things to try:

 

1. Run VS2015 in admin mode to see if it is a permission issue.

 

2. Check for odd char encodings or special chars in the files.

 

3. manually edit the csproj file and the project.json and look for anonmolies. Or delete all the project files and re-create the projects into a new solution if that is feasible.

[DevTech]

It might help people if you reference your previous question on the same topic:

 

 

 

[+unabatedshagie Subscriber¹]

7 minutes ago, DevTech said:

It might help people if you reference your previous question on the same topic:

 

 

 

I'd actually forgotten I'd posted it here previously. I thought I'd only posted on Stackoverflow. 

[DevTech]

Quote

 

"Usually this is caused by extra references in either the .sln or .suo files."

Thanks, I'm not sure what I did differently but I deleted all the files locally and got the latest code from source control and the problem seems to have fixed itself.

 

 

- It seems that every time you start over, you are just pulling the problem in again from your source control. You should examine your sln/csproj/projectjson files in extreme detail to see if something is odd with them.

 

- Also consider setting everything on your computer and VS to U.S. English to eliminate character encodings as a potential issue.

 

- Anything out of ordinary with the computer hardware such as non-standard keyboard, other input devices, running in a VM, etc

 

[+unabatedshagie Subscriber¹]

5 hours ago, DevTech said:

Things to try:

 

1. Run VS2015 in admin mode to see if it is a permission issue.

 

2. Check for odd char encodings or special chars in the files.

 

3. manually edit the csproj file and the project.json and look for anonmolies. Or delete all the project files and re-create the projects into a new solution if that is feasible.

1. Running in admin doesn't help, still get blank entries.

2. I haven't checked all the file (there are thousands) but the ones I have checked all seem fine.

3. That's not something that's possible unfortunately.

[DevTech]

Although it is only the one project, it seems like the type of error condition that VS2015 should be able to handle without crashing.

 

- so you probably have Update 3 installed but if not...

 

- you have given no details on your specific hardware and software and the type of project - ASP.NET or Console or WPF or UWP etc.

 

- for me I have observed that VS2015 is very glitchy on older hardware specially computers that can't run Hyper-V. This is a voodoo type tip which I really hate but turn on Hyper-V just in case it helps (needs a reboot) . Solved some really weird VS2015 bugs for me.

 

- try Microsoft Connect site and enter the problem description. They will respond, sometimes with useful info.

 

[DevTech]

- any VS add-ons could be a suspect - perhaps disable them for a test

 

- any software that monitors keystrokes could connect to the problem such as a real virus, a secret corporate installed keylogger, any anti-virus software, clipboard and "hot key" utility software, screen recording utils etc etc

 

- intermittent hard drive sector read issue - perhaps run full sector disk scan and also ye old "sfc /scannow" command

 

 

[+unabatedshagie Subscriber¹]

16 minutes ago, DevTech said:

Although it is only the one project, it seems like the type of error condition that VS2015 should be able to handle without crashing.

 

- so you probably have Update 3 installed but if not...

 

- you have given no details on your specific hardware and software and the type of project - ASP.NET or Console or WPF or UWP etc.

 

- for me I have observed that VS2015 is very glitchy on older hardware specially computers that can't run Hyper-V. This is a voodoo type tip which I really hate but turn on Hyper-V just in case it helps (needs a reboot) . Solved some really weird VS2015 bugs for me.

 

- try Microsoft Connect site and enter the problem description. They will respond, sometimes with useful info.

 

• I've got the latest VS updates installed.
• I've got basically the same spec computer as everyone else in the office (Intel i5, 16GB ram, terabyte drive) The only difference between my hardware and everyone else's is I bought myself a decent Logitech keyboard and mouse to replace the crappy ones that came with the machine. All machines are running Windows 10 64bit. It's a massive project, not exactly sure what it all contains. It's definitely got console applications in it. It's a website with multiple front ends, service layers backends etc. Millions of lines of code.
• I've got hyper-v enabled on my machine.
• Will try there too.

8 minutes ago, DevTech said:

- any VS add-ons could be a suspect - perhaps disable them for a test

 

- any software that monitors keystrokes could connect to the problem such as a real virus, a secret corporate installed keylogger, any anti-virus software, clipboard and "hot key" utility software, screen recording utils etc etc

 

- intermittent hard drive sector read issue - perhaps run full sector disk scan and also ye old "sfc /scannow" command

 

 

• I do have VS extensions but the issue occurs in safe mode and (not due to this issue) a fresh Windows install with a fresh VS install with no extensions added.
• The only thing I have that monitors keystrokes would be an autohotkey script that I use to quickly launch a bunch of console applications for various websites I'm testing. Also replaces @@ with my email address (because I'm lazy :-) )
• I haven't tried a disk scan. Will do one over the weekend.

[DevTech]

4 minutes ago, unabatedshagie said:

• I've got the latest VS updates installed.
• https://www.visualstudio.com/news/releasenotes/vs2015-update3-vs

 

• I've got basically the same spec computer as everyone else in the office (Intel i5, 16GB ram, terabyte drive) The only difference between my hardware and everyone else's is I bought myself a decent Logitech keyboard and mouse to replace the crappy ones that came with the machine. All machines are running Windows 10 64bit. It's a massive project, not exactly sure what it all contains. It's definitely got console applications in it. It's a website with multiple front ends, service layers backends etc. Millions of lines of code.
• If you copy your project to another computer in the office at the time of crash, it does not have the issue?

 

 

• Will try there too.
• https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio

 

 

• The only thing I have that monitors keystrokes would be an autohotkey script that I use to quickly launch a bunch of console applications for various websites I'm testing. Also replaces @@ with my email address (because I'm lazy :-) )
• uninstall autohotkey and reboot when you have the issue
• also disable WIndows Defender or any Anti-Virus Software temporarily when you have the issue

 

• I haven't tried a disk scan. Will do one over the weekend.
• also the "sfc /scannow" quickly identifies any fundamental O/S corruptions

 

- in addition to above comments, you could temporarily install a second VS2015 into a fresh Windows VM which would give you more control over making a bare minimum config that can load the files from the project that are suspect. Also don't sign into VS as yourself to avoid pulling in any settings from the cloud on a fresh install.

 

- also, is the project pulling in any stuff from Nuget? if so, can you provide a list?

 

- after all of the above, we still have the option of debugging VS2015 itself as the problem happens, but that removes all the Sherlock Holmes style fun of logically deducing the culprit

 

[DevTech]

There is a tool here that removes whitespace and checks line endings etc. That tool as-is or some mod to it that also checks char ranges etc for unusual "somethings" might be useful.

 

https://github.com/KirillOsenkov/CodeCleanupTools

 

I'm all out of ideas until more info is available.