Visual Studio 2013 crashing when including C++ files

Question

Our team is upgrading from VS 2012 to 2013. But my VS 2013 installation appears unable to handle C++ projects (Some of our C# sln have C++ project references).

Everyone else in my team can handle C++ solutions and projects without issues but I can't.

I was able to narrow down the problem to this:

Create C++ win32 sln.
Restart, no crashes.
Add a new folder (or filter), no crashes.
Add new .h file, VS 2013 crashes.
Attempt to add existing .h file and VS 2013 crashes.

I've started VS 2013 with logging via the cli but the error messages are different each run and the output in view event logs is more or less useless:

Crappy error 1:

Faulting application name: devenv.exe, version: 12.0.31101.0, time stamp: 0x54548724
Faulting module name: vcpkg.dll, version: 12.0.31101.0, time stamp: 0x5454876b
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0001ac16
Faulting process id: 0x2548
Faulting application start time: 0x01d0b7d6efc68c46
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\VC\vcpackages\vcpkg.dll
Report Id: 5e345a46-23ca-11e5-a940-f8b156c05473

Crappy error 2:

Application: devenv.exe
Framework Version: v4.0.30319
Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.
Exception Info: exception code c0000005, exception address 3C7DAC16

Any ideas on how to squeeze more information out of VS 2013? I'm not sure if there're installation issues because of 2012 which I don't want to uninstall for fear of having issues with that on reinstall. But I should think VS 2013 should be able to coexist with 2012.

All I know is the act of declaring <ClInclude/> in VS 2013 .vcxproj causes a crash.

http://vsprojectconverter.codeplex.com/ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13507901/how-to-downgrade-from-visual-studio-2012-project-to-visual-studio-2008 — abhi312, Jul 06 '15 at 10:54
Try to start devenv in safe mode: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241278.aspx and check whether there is an extension crashing on the file. — Samuel, Jul 06 '15 at 10:54
Whenever I see the useless error message containing `vcpkg.dll` and nothing else seems to work, then it's high time to reinstall VS, usually that works. This occasional problem has been that way for many versions. You didn't by any chance install any "unofficial" releases of anything .NET-ish on your box, if so, you're hosed, you'll need to start over with a clean OS. — Chris O, Jul 06 '15 at 12:21
@ChrisO I've reinstalled VS several times now. It won't be feasible to clean the OS as it's for work. Looks like I'm stuck with 2012. — Lews Therin, Jul 06 '15 at 15:47

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 01 '15 at 12:39

I decided to revisit this issue today and figured out the issue! In my environment variable settings, paths to version 11 (VS 2012) were referenced. I completely removed this references:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TestWindow
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC\BIN\amd64
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC\VCPackages
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\Tools
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Team Tools\Performance Tools\x64
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Team Tools\Performance Tools
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Team Tools\Performance Tools\x64

And so far, AFAIK, everything works smoothly.

Visual Studio 2013 crashing when including C++ files

1 Answers1