How do I REALLY reset the Visual Studio window layout

Question

I had a plugin installed in Visual Studio 2008  and it created some extra dockable windows   I have uninstalled it  and I can t get rid of the windows it created - I close them  but they always come back   They re just empty windows now  since the plugin is no longer present  but nothing I ve tried gets rid of them   I ve tried    Window -  Reset Window Layout Deleting the  suo files in my project directories Deleting the Visual Studio 9 0 folder in my Application Settings directory   Any ideas

User · Answer

How about running the following from command line,

Devenv.exe /ResetSettings

You could also save those settings in to a file, like so,

Devenv.exe /ResetSettings "C:\My Files\MySettings.vssettings"

The /ResetSettings switch, Restores Visual Studio default settings. Optionally resets the settings to the specified .vssettings file.

MSDN link

User · Answer

Have you tried this   In Visual Studio go to Tools   Import and Export Settings   Reset all settings  Be sure you back up your settings before you do this  I made the mistake of trying this to fix an issue and didn t realize it would undo all my appearance settings and toolbars as well  Took a lot of time to get back to the way I like things

User · Answer

I close them  but they always come back   When you say  they always come back  do you mean  next time you restart Visual Studio  or  immediately    One quirk of Visual Studio  at least VS2005  is that settings aren t saved until you exit   That means that if VS crashes at all while you are using it  any layout changes you made will be lost   The way around this is to always gracefully exit when you have set up everything like you want it to be   Not sure if this will help your particular situation though

User · Answer

I had similar problem except that it happened without installing any plugin  I begin to get this dialog about source control every time I open the project   tons of windows popping up and floating which I had to close one by one   Windows - gt  Rest Windows Layout  fixed it for me without any problems  It does bring the default setting which I don t mind at all

User · Answer

Note  if you have vs2010 and vs2008 and you want to reset the 2008  you will need to specify in command line the whole path  like this    C  Program Files Microsoft Visual Studio 9 0 Common7 IDE devenv exe   resetsettings   If you don t specify the path  like devenv exe  resetsettings   it will reset the latest version of Visual studio installed on your computer

User · Answer

If you have an old backup copy of CurrentSettings vssettings  you can try restoring it    I had a completely corrupted Visual Studio layout  When I tried to enter debug  I was told that VS had become unstable  When I restarted  my window layout would then be totally screwed  I tried restoring the VS current user settings in the registry from a backup  but that didn t help  However  restoring CurrentSettings vssettings seems to have cured it    There seems to be a bunch of binary stuff in there and I can imagine it gets irretrievably corrupted sometimes

User · Answer

If you want to reset your development environment of your visual studio  then you can use Import and Export setting wizard  see this for all steps   http   www authorcode com forums topic how-to-reset-development-environment-settings-of-your-visual-studio

User · Answer

If you want to reset the window layout  Then   go to  WINDOW  -   RESET WINDOW LAYOUT

User · Answer

Try devenv exe  resetuserdata  I think it s more aggressive than the Tools   Import and Export options suggested   Also check Tools   Add In Manager and make sure there aren t any orphans there

User · Answer

If you ve ever backed up your settings  Tools -  Import and Export Settings   you can restore the settings file to get back to a prior state  This is the only thing that I ve found to work

User · Answer

I tried most of the suggestions  and none of them worked   I didn t get a chance to try  resetuserdata   Finally I reinstalled the plugin and uninstalled it again  and the windows went away

[visual-studio] How do I REALLY reset the Visual Studio window layout?

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