Visual Studio 2013 crashing on startup with NCrunch 2.12.02 installed

I'm unsure whether the problem is NCrunch itself or its interaction with something else I have installed, but after upgrading to the latest version of NCrunch (2.12.02), when I open Visual Studo 2013 it crashes on startup. If I uninstall NCrunch via the Control Panel, then VS works fine. If I re-install NCrunch, then VS starts up the first time - but after closing it, subsequent attempts to start VS all fail.

It crashes whether I try and open a solution directly or not (ie it's not related to the solution itself)

I get an error in the event log but it's not terribly useful:

Faulting application name: devenv.exe, version: 12.0.31101.0, time stamp: 0x54548724
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 6.1.7601.18409, time stamp: 0x53159a86
Exception code: 0xc0020001
Fault offset: 0x0000c42d
Faulting process id: 0x1cf8
Faulting application start time: 0x01d040037acc560e
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\syswow64\KERNELBASE.dll

I'm unsure where any other useful log information might be.

I have also tried repairing my VS installation, which has had no effect.

I'm running:
Windows 7 (64bit)
Visual Studio 2013 Professional - Version 12.0.31101.00 Update 4
Installed extensions:
- AWS Toolkit
- EditorConfig
- Indent Guide
- NestIn
- ReSharper 9
- SlowCheetah
- VSCommands

I have downgraded to NCrunch 2.11.0.23 and the problem does not occur after a few iterations of opening/closing VS.

I'd appreciate any help. I'm happy to provide more info but I might need instructions on how to capture it.

Cheers,

Simon

Hi Simon,

Are you able to attach a debugger to the VS process while it crashes? Sometimes this can help with retrieving a stack trace that can better establish what is happening.

Something else to try - after installing the latest version of NCrunch, try launching VS with the following command:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe /rootsuffix Test"

This will make VS load with a clean registry root. VS being the complex beast that it is, sometimes its registry can become corrupted when it refreshes VS packages. A clean root may help us deduct where the problem is. If this solves things for you, it's possible that you may need to reinstall VS.

Hi Remco, a few updates:

I've been using NCrunch 2.11.0.23 since my original message (I haven't had time to debug the later version), and it was fine up until a few days ago, when VS started crashing on startup again.

I tried running VS with the /rootsuffix switch and that worked - VS started up (asking me questions like what theme I wanted), and NCrunch was installed. I also managed to open up the solution I'd been working on previously (with NCrunch active) and it all worked fine. So maybe NCrunch is just the trigger rather than the cause of the problem.

I'll attempt reinstalling Visual Studio as soon as I get the chance and I'll let you know how I get on.

Simon

Visual Studio is now crashing even with NCrunch uninstalled so NCrunch is definitely not causing this :)

simon wrote:Visual Studio is now crashing even with NCrunch uninstalled so NCrunch is definitely not causing this :)

Thanks, I appreciate you telling me this :) Though I do hope you manage to find out what is causing it to crash. A problematic package perhaps? Reinstall can often solve these sorts of problems.

I'm thinking the problem was a GIT plugin installed by GitExtensions - I've read other reports about it causing problems, so I've removed it and things seem stable so far.

simon wrote:I'm thinking the problem was a GIT plugin installed by GitExtensions - I've read other reports about it causing problems, so I've removed it and things seem stable so far.

I've had problems with this plugin myself, so this isn't a surprise to me :)

Thanks so much, Simon, for posting your updates here! My VS kept crashing on me during startup but after uninstalling GitExtensions I could work again!

I even put up a blog post about this where I refer to your answer (http://shades-of-orange.com/post/2015/02/23/Visual-Studio-2013-Update-4-Crashes-On-Startup-It-Might-Be-GitExtensions-Fault) because this bugged me so much.