Intellisense Completion Mode stops working (Bug?)

Question

Visual Studio Intellisense Completion Mode is a feature that I use all the time and very much appreciate. However, about 2 weeks ago it quit working. Since I have never had the need to turn it off before, it took me quite a while to find out how to turn it back on (Found it here: Edit/Intellisense/Toggle Completion Mode).

Ever since then, it will work for a while after I start Visual Studio, then after a period of time, from a few minutes or hours, it will stop working again. Then if I go to Edit/Intellisense/Toggle Completion Mode I can turn it back on.

In order to ensure I wasn't accidentally triggering the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Alt+Space) to disable it, I turned off the keyboard shortcut from within VS settings.

For clarification, here is what Completion Mode looks like when it is working. If I hit the space-bar it would auto-complete the word "string" for me.

And here is what it looks like when it is not working. If I hit the space-bar no auto-complete occurs, I just get the text "str" with a space after it.

BTW, I run Visual Studio 2019 with the latest updates.

Anyone have any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks!

This issue has not been resolved for the solution/project I have been working on. Since it is intermittent, and can be hours between occurrences, I will need to wait until I switch to working on a different project for a length of time to say whether or not the issue is with the project, or Visual Studio. I will post back at that time. — Joe Gayetty
Just had it occur on a second solution/project. So it is not confined to just one. — Joe Gayetty
Seems this may have been fixed by a recent VS Update. As I said my VS was fully patched when this was occurring. But last week a VS update came out, so I installed it right away. The problem has not recurred again. Time will tell for sure. — Joe Gayetty

Mr Qian Mr Qian · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-18T03:38:03

Intellisense Completion Mode stops working (Bug?)

I am sure that this is not an issue of VS. And it works well in my side. So l think this is related to VS environment or project itself.

First, thanks to Satchi for providing such good steps.

To try these further steps:

Suggestion

1) try to delete all files under C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\16.0_xxxx\ComponentModelCache

2) try to create a new project and test whether this issue happens again.

If it still exists under the new project, I think your VS IDE itself has broken.

-- Try Satchi's step 2(reset Vs settings)

-- do a repair in VS Installer

-- Also, Microsoft Extensions sometimes have an impact on the VS IDE due to some reasons, so you need to try to disable them to test the issue.

If it does not happen in the new project, try:

-- close VS Instance, delete .vs hidden folder under solution folder, bin ,obj folder and then restart VS to test again.

In addition, you can use TAB key to execute toggle Completion Mode rather than Space key.

-------------Update 1---------------

Since you encountered the same error on the second project, I think your VS IDE has some errors.

Please try to update VS to the latest version or just do a repair in VS Installer.

Finally, based on your feedback, updating VS fixed your problem.

Intellisense Completion Mode stops working (Bug?)

2 Answers