How to downgrade Visual Studio 2017.3 to 2017.2?

Question

Updating VS to 2017.3 broke xunit test discovery for me. Everything worked fine with 2017.2 so im looking for a way to downgrade.

Broke Typescript debugging for me. I also spent an hour yesterday looking for a way to downgrade. All the (web) installer links I can find will reinstall the latest 2017.3 version. Very frustrating — PaulG, Aug 17 '17 at 10:38
@PaulG check out my answer posted below. Forgot to answer it yesterday. — Alexander Herold, Aug 17 '17 at 12:07
Try deleting the contents of %TEMP%\VisualStudioTestExplorerExtensions to fix your xUnit issue. — Foole, Aug 18 '17 at 04:50
I would love to do this also, but sadly M$ doesn't want us to do it. 2017.3 is the worse upgrade for me. They managed to break even Ctrl-F7 to compile a file... 2017.3.1 seems to fix at least that. With this new update policy, the best strategy is to update when you see 2017.x.5 IMO... — jj99, Aug 22 '17 at 21:46
Got the same thing. How on earth is crap like this released? — sebrock, Aug 28 '17 at 14:41

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 17 '17 at 12:06

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A direct downgrade is not possible, but a specific version can be installed.

Uninstall Visual Studio 2017 using the Visual Studio Installer.
Download the Visual Studio 2017 version 15.0 RTW installer from https://my.visualstudio.com. For more information on how to do this, refer to the older downloads page
Run the installer to install Visual Studio 2017, version 15.0.

found here: https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/windows/visual-studio/downgrading-vs-2017/

answered Aug 17 '17 at 12:06

Alexander Herold

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Thanks kindly. Do you know if you can then update to 15.2 (and not 15.3)? – PaulG Aug 17 '17 at 12:50
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I did an update after that, but it was 15.3. I do not know if it is possible. – Alexander Herold Aug 17 '17 at 13:00
@PaulG Did you find a way to update to exactly 15.2 (not 15.3)? – Kiril Kirov Mar 06 '18 at 16:44
@KirilKirov - I did not, sorry. – PaulG Mar 07 '18 at 09:23
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@PaulG thanks. I have the same situation - 15.6 is not compatible with 15.5.7 and I can't downgrade. I can only download 15.5.0, which is not an option, as it has a bug, fixed in 15.5.5. I don't understand why MS does this, it's extremely uncomfortable. – Kiril Kirov Mar 07 '18 at 09:51

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 28 '20 at 08:46

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this page has instructions on how to install a specific version of VS 2017, but there is only a limited list of versions available:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/productinfo/installing-an-earlier-release-of-vs2017

answered Apr 28 '20 at 08:46

more urgent jest

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score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 22 '17 at 21:53

IMO, the only real way to achieve this is after an update to make an ISO, or just download and cache the installation like described for example here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/install-vs-inconsistent-quality-network

Then if the build was actually good, uninstall the new broken one and install again from the cache. I have not tried this yet, but after this totally broken 2017.3, I would definitely start caching working installation to have something to fall back.

How to downgrade Visual Studio 2017.3 to 2017.2?

3 Answers3

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