Visual Studio 2013 or 2015 EditorPackage did not load correctly constantly

Question

When starting Visual Studio 2013 Pro (Update 4 installed) I very often get this error message (several times a day now) for the past about two weeks:

The 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.Editor.Implementation.EditorPackage' package did not load correctly.

I know I can correct this problem by closing Visual Studio and deleting:

%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\ComponentModelCache

I have never seen it before that time and as far as I found out in the Internet it was possibly introduced with Update 3.

Well, the problem is that it is annoying to restart Visual Studio several times a day, and I was wondering if anyone else is experiencing this and knows how to solve it for good or what the cause is.

I noticed that it happens extremely often if I work in more than one instance of Visual Studio in parallel. This one is a killer. But still I suspect a third-party component to be involved or it is the size of one of the solutions (about 70 projects). I tried to deactivate some extensions I newly installed and need for the big project, but to no avail.

Just as information: I am working with C#. When working in parallel with projects open in several instances of Visual Studio I never had problems before.

Does anyone have the same problem to this extend or possibly have a better solution than deleting the folder and restarting?

Solution 1

This has become a popular question so I thought I add an explicit answer how to (at least) temporarily fix the problem as already stated in the question:

I stop Visual Studio and delete the following folder (completely, not just contents)

%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\ComponentModelCache

If you are using VS2015, then the path should be:

%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0\ComponentModelCache

If you are using VS2017, then the path should be:

%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\15.0\ComponentModelCache

I don't keep a backup of the folder. It is created automatically again when starting Visual Studio.

I have never found a solution how to permanently fix the problem in that working environment. In my new developing environment (new projects and new workplace) the problem never happens.

Solution 2

In that case you can start Visual Studio setup again and choose the option showing two options, Repair and Uninstall. Then click Repair and when repair is done, restart the computer. Then the issue has been resolved.

Comments

[Rich Benner]

Could you expand on this answer? More information would be good for others with the same issue. Read here for information on how to give a good answer stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-answer

[Uwe Hafner]

I don't know about current VS versions but with earlier versions I had the problem that calling repair or using setup startup options messed up my installed add-ons/ integrated third party products and/or settings and I had to reconfigure them. So I am usually reluctant to use that.

[The Bearded Llama]

Thank you for the suggestion @Uwe, It might be worth updating your answer to say that this works for VS2015 Update 3 as well! Had the same issue crop up with a number of packages including the one referenced in the title. Repair and restart didn't fix the problem, but your suggestion did

[Uwe Hafner]

@TheBeardedLlama. Thanks for the update. I haven't had the issue with VS2015 yet. But sad it hasn't been fixed yet.

[Raj]

i had the issue on VS2015 with update 3 and the latest hotfixes... clearing the folder seemed to resolve the issue

[krlzlx]

That's funny. Your solution sped up a lot the loading of my VS2013 solutions!

[Pallavi]

deleting just the content wasn't working for me. came across this finally. Thanks a lot!

[Travis J]

One thing to note, is that if you are using something other than Visual Studio then you will need to remove the relevant folder. For example, I had this issue with a small test environment in Visual Studio Web Express, and the folder location was \microsoft\VWDExpress . The fix still worked though, thanks :)

[Roesmi]

Unfortunately deliting the folder doesn't work for me :(

[Uwe Hafner]

@Miquel Out of curiosity: What version of Visual Studio are you using?