Visual Studio 2010 crashes repeatedly

Question

I've been running Visual Studio 2010 (the official release) for some time now. Lately, VS will crash 10+ times during my 8 hour work day. In VS2008, crashes were common when working with large Xaml files, and while I experience some of that with VS2010, crashes occur when debugging, starting the debugger, stopping the debugger, and other random times when editing code.

I've looked through the problem reports, and the one I've found that occurs most frequently is:

Description

Faulting Application Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe

Problem signature

Problem Event Name: APPCRASH

Application Name: devenv.exe

Application Version: 10.0.30319.1

Application Timestamp: 4ba1fab3

Fault Module Name: ntdll.dll

Fault Module Version: 6.1.7600.16385

Fault Module Timestamp: 4a5bdb3b

Exception Code: c0000005

Exception Offset: 0002e23e

I'm running Windows 7 (x64). Hoepfully someone has come across this problem and has found a solution. I plan on reinstalling VS2010. Hopefully that takes care of the problem.

Answer 1

Do you think you have installed any extra Extensions which might lead to frequent crashes?

You can try

Devenv.exe /SafeMode

to start in Safe mode. You can also try

Devenv.exe /Log

Which will log all activity. Have not tried this so don't know What activities are logged.

Visual Studio 2010 Command Line Switches

Answer 2

I was having a similar problem and this helped me

http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/618802/visual-studio-random-frequent-crash

Running this from the command prompt seemed to fix it. It hasn't crashed for the whole day today.

regsvr32 c:\Windows\System32\ole32.dll

Answer 3

I had similar issues with Visual Studio. The problem was the service pack which for some reason was not installed properly.

I had to reapply the SP1 using the Repair / reapply option. This kind of fixed my issue.

Also make sure to reboot the system.

Answer 4

Just to help people who search it: It was webex instant messenger related part, but not Cisco itself. The cause was a component in Studio Power Tools relevant to integration with messenger. Reinstall power tools but without messaging integration.

In other occasion it is almost always a corporate antivirus authentication helper thing. It required to manually remove registry entries which cause background TFS logins break the studio at random moments.

Answer 5

I had the "Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 has stopped working" error, imediately when Visual Studio 2010 was starting. Fault module was clr.dll in my case. Only rebooting helped sometimes.

I solved it by removing .NET completely and reinstalling it.

Be aware that if you updated to .NET 4.5 this includes .NET 4, so you have to remove and reinstall .NET 4.5

Answer 6

I know why it could be crashing. Code it self. Have you tried to debug the failed instance of VS2010 with Vs2010? If the xaml designer crashed anywhere in your code you should be able to see the stack trace. Also, try to load the same xaml into Blend 4 and then run the vs2010 on Blend when that crashes. I've had some good results debugging Vs2010 crashes like that.

Answer 7

There are so many things that can cause studio to crash.

I'd look at everything from video card drivers to whether the RAM is stable.

Note, there is a microsoft connect but on this exact issue at: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/634162/devenv-exe-frequent-intermittent-crashes-fault-module-name-ntdll-dll

You might vote on it or add your own information to the report but the very first thing I'd do is update my video drivers. One place I was at had a lot of issues with 2005; it would randomly crash just displaying the design surface or when opening a few too many code files; but once we got decent video cards and the appropriate drivers installed it worked flawlessly.

Answer 8

I disabled “Options"-"Evnironment"-"Add-in/Micros Security"->"Allow macros to run", and fixed the problem.

Answer 9

I think I just solved a similar issue on my computer, but probably not the same cause. It was related to TortoiseSVN (I think visual loads the tortoise DLL because it is integrated with the explorer, even if I don't have a specific visual studio plug-in). I upgraded TortoiseSVN (from 1.7.8 to 1.7.11) and it didn't crash for a few hours (I also had a 100% repro case when closing visual studio which does not happen anymore). Maybe there is some way to check what DLLs are loaded by visual studio to troubleshoot what are the candidates for upgrading/uninstalling, but I didn't go this far.

Hope it can help someone else.

Answer 10

While developing C++ code, Visual Studio 2010 started crashing frequently and at random times after I enabled the Task List.

As an alternative to using the Task List, I am now simply using the Find in Files tool (Ctrl+Shift+F) and searching for the string TODO as an alternative.

Answer 11

i was having a similar problem. visual studio 2010 was crashing. when i attached, it said it had a read access violation in ntdll.dll

closed all my open instances (there were 5) and it stopped happening.

Answer 12

Today I had this error, in my case it was because Microsoft released the update (KB2858725) the FrameWork 4.5.1, which the download and installed,

However this is definitely addressed by performing the following steps:

1. FrameWork 4.5.1 download (KB2858728) => NDP451-KB2858728-x86-x64-ENU.exe-Allos http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40779

2. Install the downloaded software (KB2858728)

3. Try Vs, but give the same error.

4. Uninstall the downloaded software (KB2858728) (this task fully cleaned upgrade giving problems (KB2858725)

5. Install the downloaded software (KB2858728) again

6. Try Vs, this time if it will work

NOTE: NEVER! install update (KB2858725)

Answer 13

Logging helps indeed. I have the same problem with crashes. Since there could be numerous reasons and lots of log data, I wrote this .bat (Win7 x64, VS2010 Express) to keep logs organized and easy to analyze:

    @echo off

    rem date and time in format YYYYMonDD_hhmmss
    set year=%DATE:~-4%
    set month=%DATE:~3,2%
    set day=%DATE:~0,2%

    IF %month%==01 set monthstr=Jan
    IF %month%==02 set monthstr=Feb
    IF %month%==03 set monthstr=Mar
    IF %month%==04 set monthstr=Apr
    IF %month%==05 set monthstr=May
    IF %month%==06 set monthstr=Jun
    IF %month%==07 set monthstr=Jul
    IF %month%==08 set monthstr=Aug
    IF %month%==09 set monthstr=Sep
    IF %month%==10 set monthstr=Oct
    IF %month%==11 set monthstr=Nov
    IF %month%==12 set monthstr=Dec

    set now=%TIME:~0,-3%
    set now=%now::=%
    set now=%now: =0%
    set now=%year%%monthstr%%day%_%now%

    start "VS2010 express" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\VCExpress.exe" /Log "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VSlogs\VS_log_%now%.txt"

Answer 14

I had the same problem. I cleared my settings. Configured environment to use C# development settings. Then i disabled all extensions against which disable button was present. I enabled them one by one while opening, running and closing solutions. I found the offending extension to be .Net reflector v 8.5.0.179 by red gate. I had VS2010, VS2012 and VS2013 all installed on my windows 8.1 enterprise 64bit. All of them had the same issue. Whenever i closed the solution VS would crash. Hope it helps.