Visual studio installation path grayed out

Question

I had to reformat one of my drives (T:) and change its purpose. I had Visual studio 2015 installed on it, uninstalled it before formatting and now the drive has a different letter (can't change it, other things installed on it). I want to install visual studio 2015 again, but on the C: drive. When I run the installation, I get this:

The T: drive doesn't exist anymore, and I can't change the installation path to another drive.

I tried some solutions where I had to delete registry keys, but didn't succeed since most of the solutions were for older versions of visual studio. Is there a way to change the path?

Solution 1

Run installer in command line (Admin Mode) In folder keep File vs_community_ENU.exe

and put this command

vs_community_ENU.exe /uninstall /force

Then put this

vs_community_ENU /CustomInstallPath C:\VisualStudio2015

NewDrive:\VisualStudio2015

it work for me

Hope this helps

Solution 2

I had the same problem. I had an installed Visual Studio on a crashed harddisk. I tried everything above, nothing worked. You should use this method as ultima ratio:

There is a VisualStudioUninstaller by Microsoft.

1. Download it
2. Extract it
3. Run it with Setup.ForcedUninstall.exe in an administrator command prompt

If this fails: Start an elevated powershell:

install-package msi -provider PowerShellGet
get-msicomponentinfo '{777CBCAC-12AB-4A57-A753-4A7D23B484D3}' | get-msiproductinfo | uninstall-msiproduct -properties IGNOREDEPENDENCIES=ALL

Try again. If this fails, replace the GUID with one of the following:

Visual Studio 2015: {777CBCAC-12AB-4A57-A753-4A7D23B484D3}
Visual Studio 2013: {56E09E41-21B6-4F87-8D60-0787D028ECDD}
Visual Studio 2012: {DB786F13-64A8-45D7-8C03-0E819DF9F7B3}
Visual Studio 2010: {01696F98-947C-4CF9-8BD3-ABE70332FDED}

Sources: blogs.msdn.microsoft.com and landinghub.visualstudio.com

If this fails get an exorcist or/and reinstall your system.

Solution 3

I know you said it worked, but for some (including me) it did not. After multiple hours, however, I found a way. Here are the steps to my solution:

1. If you have not uninstalled VS2015 yet, do it through Control Panel.
2. Run the setup (ect. vs_community.exe).
3. If you cannot install on desired drive, keep reading here :)
4. Copy the path from where the VS2015 want you to install it on (e.g.: "D:\Programmer\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0").
5. Open regedit(Just press windows key, type it in, and press Enter).
6. Warning, now you are in the windows registry, be careful or you may cause system-wide instability.
7. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData Here there should be 2 folders called something like S-1-5-18 and S-1-5-21-345634235-23423416487. Just start with the one with the smallest number.
8. Go into the Components folder, and here you should see many folders with numbers and letters as name. Right click on the first of these, and click Search. ("Find" for Windows 10)
9. Paste the path from step 4. here, and make sure that the 3 top boxes are checked (they should be by default).
10. Right-click the first result of the search and click export. Save it somewhere you remember, then right-click it again and delete it this time.
11. Run the VS2015 setup again (vs_community.exe) and check if you can change the path now. If not go back to 9. and continue.
12. If it worked, just install VS2015 and just remember where you put your saved reg files. If anything goes wrong, you can restore them again by running the file.

Hope this helps someone!

Solution 4

This worked for me:

1. Start procmon and run the VS installation.

2. In procmon, find the relevant registry by looking for:

   "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\*\Components"

3. Make sure the key you've found was successfully opened (result should be SUCCESS)

4. Open regedit and find the relevant Components folder.
5. Search for the key you have found.
6. Export it for backup, and then delete it.

Hope it works for you too :-)

Solution 5

For me, it was the mistake of installing SQL Server Management Studio 2016 before installing Visual Studio 2015. SSMS 2016 is now based of VS 2015 Shell Core. And the new setup doesn't allow for any interaction except pressing the Install button. That way, part of VS 2015 was installed to C: drive. And hence, all options to change VS 2015 Enterprise install path failed.

I removed SMSS 2016 and, explicitly, VS 2015 Shell Core and then tried to install VS 2015 and it worked with Custom Path and Browse button.

View more solutions

Comments

[Philippe Paré]

Actually, using /uninstall /force was the solution. @HansPassant didn't make it an answer but at this point, I can't test your solution. Thanks for the consideration anyways!

[Emil Hansen]

I know, just added it to help, because /uninstall /force did not work for me.

[ElectroBit]

Neither of these worked for me...I can just keep deleting registry keys and nothing happens.

[Emil Hansen]

How many have you removed? I removed around 20 before it worked.

[ElectroBit]

I deleted ALL the registries pointing to the application except for one that can't be deleted, and it still doesn't work. WHAT GIVES!?

[Emil Hansen]

Hmm, have you tried both regedit folders (e.x. S-1-5-18 and S-1-5-21-345634235-23423416487)?

[ElectroBit]

By the way, editing the registry has apparently nuked Visual Studio, so I just reinstalled Windows...

[Rob]

I have downloaded RegScanner and let it search for the path it points to (in my case "E:\Visual Studio 2015"). I removed 12k+ regedit keys in the compontent folder. This finally worked. Thanks a bunch.

[23W]

@Rob, Thank you. Your solution is helped me.

[Felix D.]

Great, it worked. Although "vs_community_ENU.exe /uninstall /force" did not fully uninstall all secondary components of VS 15.

[Rodrigo]

Hi. Great tip. I had to install, run your first line (/uninstall /force). I got confused by the "NewDrive:\VIsualStudio2015"... which on my case was f:\VisualStudio. Worked great.

[Chris]

Worked fine. After executing the uninstall tool multiple times and a reboot, i was able to change the install location.

[user1175801]

I tried a bunch of the other options on this page and this was the one that actually worked for me.

[Christopher K.]

Worked great. But be aware that this uninstalls lots of stuff like .NET Framework and Microsoft C++ Redistributable. For me this broke some programs that require these things, but installing Visual Studio afterwards solved this.

[klm123]

Applying this to vs_community__1758346211.1527346351.exe It says that only one command argument is allowed.

[Duck Dodgers]

This still didn't work. I need the exorcist! Looking to install Visual Studio 2017, with the packages in it for Visual Studio 2015 project support.

[Juv]

This was the only answer that actually made sense and worked for me, at least with VS 2019. Unfortunately I am working on a VM and the VM has been assigned 100gb of Hard Drive, and my option was to use a network drive but then I get Drive P:\User\VS\Packages is not a fixed drive, therefor I think this is unsolvable. My options are to try and remove some space on the HD, or request the IT to make the VM HD larger. Any other suggestions?

[KulaGGin]

Thx. The other solutions with /uninstall /force and blindly deleting registry keys in \Components didn't work. This worked.

[KulaGGin]

Absolute cringe that we have to do this kind of stuff to install Visual Studio where we want it.