Visual Studio Tips

Some cleanup commands for Visual Studio.

1. devenv /ResetUserData
This command is used to reset user data. Settings in the Tools->Options within Visual Studio will be reset. You might need to export your settings before run this command.
In MSDN forums, I saw many customers reported that VS is in weird states such as a window is missing, tool buttons in a window is not correct etc. This command solved most of these issues.

2. devenv /ResetSkipPkgs
When a package loading error occurs, we may suppress VS to load it in the future. This approach hides the problem. ResetSkipPkgs switch will make VS to load the skipped packages while launching VS. After we get the error message for package loading error, we can do more troubleshooting.

3. devenv /setup
This command is used to build menus, commands and registry settings for all VS packages. Many VS add-ons contain packages. When we get package errors for an add-on, the first thing to try is repairing the add-on. If the repair doesn't work, just run devenv /setup.

4. devenv /SafeMode
This command will start VS in safe mode. In safe mode, VS will not load any third party packages.