Package management initialization failed: Access Denied Error when opening Visual Studio 2017

Question

I'm getting the following error when opening VS 2017 on Windows 7 64-bit:

Package management initialization failed: Access Denied.

You can get more information by examining the file:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.<version>\ActivityLog.xml

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It all started after I added my solution to SVN. I had no problems until I tried to add a file and got the following error:

Value does not fall within the expected range

I followed the steps mentioned in this answer and did a 'devenv /setup', after that I started getting the Package management initialization failed: Access Denied. error when opening VS. Now Visual Studio doesn't even start.

Has anyone else experienced this problem and resolved it?

Edit:

I tried starting as an administrator and it worked. But otherwise it doesn't.

Solution 1

It turns out that this is a bug, that hasn't yet been resolved. This error also occurs when starting Visual Studio after an update.

But there is a workaround from this thread that worked for me,

Delete the privateregistry.bin file from the following folder:

C:\users\%username%\Appdata\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0_<version id>\

This is however a temporary fix and resets the user's preferences. That's why it worked when I started it as an administrator, since the problem is user specific.

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Update

This bug is supposedly fixed in the latest versions of Visual Studio. But for the bug fix to work, the old privateregistry.bin file still needs to be deleted.

Solution 2

@Xpleria, the answer works fine. To open the AppData folder, you can type:

%AppData%

directly in the Address bar.

https://support.pointlogic.com/faq/troubleshooting/accessing-the-appdata-folder

Comments

[Henrik]

same problem, and same fix experienced after installing microsoft.net.compilers nuget package..

[Doug Null]

same problem; same fix.

[Kappacake]

19 June 2018 - problem still occurs

[Xpleria]

@demonicdaron does the problem fix and then appear again? Have you updated VS to the latest version?

[Kappacake]

The fix works fine. After a couple of days the problems occurs again. I think the issue might be due to the fact that I don't have the latest version of VS17 installed (I am on 15.3.1, whilst the latest is 15.7). Unfortunately I work on a 3rd party managed desktop so I cannot update the software myself.

[Xpleria]

For problem to be fixed permanently, you need to update VS. Otherwise, at some point of time, it will corrupt the privateregistry.bin again. Try and get VS updated to the latest version.

[Rocklan]

I am on visual studio 2017 , version 15.7.5 and got this error, and deleting privateregistry.bin fixed the problem. Just a warning, deleting this file will mean you'll need to re-setup your VS config all over again.

[Jason Cragun]

this error also occurs when you are out of disk space

[kltft]

Error just occurred on a fresh install of VS 2019 Enterprise (16.4.2). Deleting privateregistry.bin and reopening worked.

[DigitalDan]

I had the same problem today (Apr 2022) with VS2022 after installing an update. This answer fixed it for me (but the folder was 17.0 instead of 15.0).