39

We're experiencing an annoying problem issues with ReSharper's color identifiers feature when Visual Studio 2012 is set to the built-in dark theme.

With ReSharper's color identifiers disabled, the code looks fine:

Code looking fine

Then, we enable ReSharper's color identifiers:

ReSharper's code inspection settings

And now the code is completly unreadable:

Some unreadable code

The curious thing, on a colleague's machine, the same code, with the same Visual Studio and ReSharper settings... looks right:

Some good-looking code

We tried reinitializing both Visual Studio and ReSharper settings, disabling add-ons and extensions and other voodoos to no avail.

Here are our setups:

Albireo
  • 10,977
  • 13
  • 62
  • 96

6 Answers6

53

I had this same problem with vs2013 and resharper 8. I was able to fix by following these steps:

  1. Close all Visual Studio instances
  2. Open C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio {VS version}\Common7\IDE\Extensions\extensions.configurationchanged file
  3. Type anything there
  4. Save the file
  5. Open VS and check Fonts and Colors in Tools | Options | Environment

source http://resharper-support.jetbrains.com/entries/26859128-ReSharper-Fonts-Colors-settings-do-not-appear-in-Visual-Studio-after-installation

dan
  • 9,712
  • 6
  • 49
  • 62
  • This worked also for other problems with messed-up colors. Thanks! – zenpoy Oct 15 '14 at 08:04
  • 1
    Using Visual Studio 2013 with Resharper 10 and this worked for me! – user1431072 Nov 17 '15 at 19:48
  • 3
    Instead of modifying `extensions.configurationchanged` (which requires elevation), you can also run `devenv /updateconfiguration`, an undocumented command which does the same thing – Igal Tabachnik Feb 11 '16 at 07:58
  • @IgalTabachnik your comment was hidden and I didn't read it. Else I would have tried instead of doing what's suggested in this answer. – IsmailS May 05 '16 at 05:27
7

By diffing our system information, I noticed three add-ins I had my colleague didn't (JetBrains TeamCity Addin 7.1, VisualSVN 3.0.5 and Git Extensions).

Trying to disable them one by one I found out the culprit is the add-in for TeamCity: as soon as I uninstalled it (it's not reported in Visual Studio, and you can't disable it) the color scheme fixed itself.

The funny thing is both ReSharper and the TeamCity add-ins are provided by JetBrains.

John Saunders
  • 160,644
  • 26
  • 247
  • 397
Albireo
  • 10,977
  • 13
  • 62
  • 96
7

I had the same problem too in VS2013, unfortunately editing the configurationchanged file didn't work for me. However I fixed it by doing the following:

  1. deleting the following registry key:

    HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0_Config

  2. Run devenv /ResetSettings from VS 2013 admin command prompt
Adriaan de Beer
  • 1,136
  • 13
  • 23
  • same here, albireo's fix didnt work, but this one did – Riki Jul 03 '15 at 17:18
  • 2
    This worked for me as well. I skipped step 1 and executed step 2 from the Start Menu's "Run" panel. Colors....my pretty colors! – Buffalo Jul 10 '15 at 15:45
  • This seems to be a simpler way than the others although I had to rearrange all settings, such as locations of windows in VS – Tae-Sung Shin Oct 09 '15 at 19:41
2

It is a known bug in TeamCity Addin installer. It was fixed in 7.1.5 version. Please, look at related issue in our tracker and 7.1.5 release notes.

lodkin
  • 101
  • 4
2

I use a custom dark theme in Visual Studio 2010 and probably about 75% of the time when I first open a solution up, ReSharper 7.1.1 does exactly the same thing as in your "unreadable" image. I mean, the colors look exactly like that.

I have tested this across several computers with no plug-ins except ReSharper, and with various other plug-ins and no matter what, I get this all of the time. I do not have TeamCity Addin at all and never have.

Anyway, in case anyone is looking for a solution, this fixes it: Tools > Options > Environment > Fonts & Colors > Ok. That's it. Even no changes causes it to refresh and display properly. I can't prevent it, but this fixes it and is the first step I do pretty much every time I open VS2010.

Hope this helps someone.

Jon Comtois
  • 1,824
  • 1
  • 22
  • 29
0

I use VS2013 and had the same problem. In my case the culprit was the PowerShell Tools extension, after uninstalling it the color scheme went back to a sane state.