Since we released Visual Studio 2015 on July 20th we’ve been busily answering questions on our forums, here on the blog, on Connect, and on StackOverflow. Here are some of the common questions.
Install / Setup
- Why is my setup taking so long / hanging partway through. What’s going on?
- Where are the ISO Images for VS 2015?
- Can I create a custom ISO image that includes all the third party software?
- Can I upgrade from VS 2015 RC to VS 2015 RTM?
- Does VS 2015 work side by side with VS 2013, or VS 2012?
Licensing / Purchase
- I signed into the IDE, but it’s still telling me that the trial will expire. What’s going on?
- Community Edition is telling me my trial has expired. Do I have to pay for Community edition?
- Why do I have to sign in with my Microsoft account every day to access Azure resources?
- Where can I buy Visual Studio Pro without MSDN (Pro only)?
- I already have a paid SKU of VS 2013. Do I need to pay for VS 2015?
Tools / Features
- I installed VS 2015 but can’t find tools for Windows 10 development. Where are they?
- I can’t find Visual Studio 2015 in the Start Menu. Is my VS install corrupt?
- Why do the diagnostics tools fail unexpectedly?
- How do I use NuGet in a Cordova project?
- When saving Xaml files or switching between Xaml and C#, VS locks up for a few seconds. Why is this and how can I workaround it?
Install / Setup
1. Why is my setup taking so long / hanging partway through. What’s going on?
In VS 2015 you can chose to configure your setup to only install the tools you want, which makes the install lighter and faster. If you chose to do a full installation though, Visual Studio is a pretty big product and will take over 30GB of disk space after installation and it installs a lot of third party software including the Android SDK, the Java Developer Kit, and the Windows and Android emulators. The progress indicator during installation of the third-party software doesn’t advance, but the software is usually being installed — that’s a bug we’re going to fix. On a slow connection in particular, download can take a very long time or even time out. If setup doesn’t complete successfully, try the ISO image.
2. Where are the ISO Images for VS 2015?
Browse to https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/download-visual-studio-vs and select Visual Studio 2015 from the left navigation on the page. Select the product you want, then in the drop down for “choose format,” select ISO.
3. Can I create a custom ISO image that includes all the third party software?
You’re going to want to use the /layout switch on setup to create an offline setup. To do that, browse to https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/download-visual-studio-vs and select Visual Studio 2015 from the left navigation on the page. Select the Web (Online) format for the installer and when prompted by the browser, save the file. Then go to the command line and run that setup program from where you saved it, but include the /layout switch. This MSDN article section on Downloading VS for an offline installation MSDN explains more about how to do that.
4. Can I upgrade from VS 2015 RC to VS 2015 RTM?
Yes. Visual Studio 2015 RTM installs right on top of VS 2015 RC or any other previous CTP for VS 2015. Go to downloads page on visualstudio.com to start the VS 2015 RTM download.
The upgrade however works only when upgrading at the same SKU level e.g. upgrading from VS 2015 RC Professional to VS 2015 RTM Professional. The upgrade from RC to RTM won’t work if the SKU level is different, e.g. when upgrading from Community to Professional, Professional to Enterprise, or downgrading from Enterprise to Professional, or Professional to Community. In this case you will need to uninstall the existing version of VS 2015 before installing VS 2015 RTM . Check out this MSDN library on Installing Visual Studio for more info on troubleshooting and repairing your installation.
5. Does VS 2015 work side by side with VS 2013, or VS 2012?
Yes Visual Studio 2015 works side by side with VS 2013, &/or VS 2012. This MSDN article on Installing VS Versions side-by-side provides details on how this works.
Licensing / Purchase
1. I signed into the IDE, but it’s still telling me that the trial will expire. What’s going on?
The odds are that the account you signed in with doesn’t have an MSDN subscription or Visual Studio Online subscription associated with it. Sign in with an account that does and the license should be issued automatically or apply a product key
2. Community Edition is telling me my trial has expired. Do I have to pay for Community edition?
No, Community edition is free to use. We use the same infrastructure that allows you to unlock VS w/ an online subscription to manage the requirement of signing into Community edition so some of our strings overlap cross these scenarios. Trial here means the period you can use the community edition before you must sign in to fully unlock the IDE.
3. Why do I have to sign in with my Microsoft account every day to access Azure resources?
The token issued for a Microsoft account have a fixed 12-hour lifecycle. We are working on improvements that will allow us to apply a more liberal lifecycle policy on the tokens issued for MSAs through Azure. In the interim we recommend setting a Work or School account as the administrator for subscriptions you access frequently because tokens issued to Work or School accounts have a more permissive lifecycle policy. You can add an additional account to Visual Studio under “File -> Account Settings” and access azure resources throughout Visual Studio by selecting that account from the Account picker that appears.
4. Where can I buy Visual Studio Pro without MSDN (Pro only)?
It will be available for sale via resellers and the online Microsoft Store starting on September 1st, the delay is due to channel logistics. In the meantime you can rent Visual Studio Professional 2015 monthly for $45 (US pricing). Details on how to buy are on the get user licenses page on visualstudio.com. You will need to choose the Visual Studio Online Professional plan and then you can sign in to the Visual Studio Professional 2015 trial and it’ll work. We don’t however offer product keys through Visual Studio Online.
5. I already have a paid SKU of VS 2013. Do I need to pay for VS 2015?
Yes.
Visual Studio 2015 does not install on top of VS 2013, but is installed alongside VS 2013. You can however, try VS 2015 for free for 30 days, after which your license will expire. Additionally you can use Visual Studio 2015 Community for free. Check out the license terms for using VS Community.
Tools / Features
1. I installed VS 2015 but can’t find tools for Windows 10 development. Where are they?
During setup, Windows 10 tools aren’t turned on by default. Re-run setup (e.g. Go to the control panel and select Visual Studio and click modify or change) and click on the Advanced button. You’ll see a check box there for the Win10 tools. Turn it on and proceed.
2. I can’t find Visual Studio 2015 in the Start Menu. Is my VS install corrupt?
No, your VS install is not corrupt. The Visual Studio 2015 application icon has been moved outside of the Visual Studio 2015 folder. If you’re running Windows 7, you can find the application at the top of the “All Programs” list grouped with other application icons. If you are running Windows 8, 8.1 or 10, you can find the application listed under the ‘V’ grouping. If you are still unable to find it, use Windows search (press the Windows key, then type “Visual Studio 2015”).
The application icon will no longer be located in the Visual Studio 2015 folder.
3. Why do the diagnostics tools fail unexpectedly?
The primary cause for this is a known issue for those of you that have upgraded from an earlier preview version of Windows 10. If you are on Windows 10 you can confirm the issue by switching to the “Diagnostics Hub” tab of the output window, and you will see “No such interface supported” in the output. More information, including workaround steps to resolve this issue please read the post on No such interface supported in VS 2015 on Windows 10. Other causes of the window failing unexpectedly are being actively investigated, if you experience other failures please report these using the Feedback tools in Visual Studio 2015.
4. How do I use NuGet in a Cordova project?
We’re working on guidance documentation to help you with this. We are also closely monitoring your feedback and are looking at improve this experience.
5. When saving Xaml files or switching between Xaml and C#, why does VS lock up for a few seconds. How can I workaround it?
This is a bug. We are working on a fix right now. Meanwhile the workaround is to remove msbuild:Compile property from file properties.
Check out the Visual Studio 2015 KB for other bug fixes and workaround we have shared for this release. Is your question or bug not answered anywhere? Please leave us a comment below and we will help you as best we can.
Radhika Tadinada, Program Manager, Visual Studio @RadhikaTadinada Radhika has been at Microsoft for almost 4 years. She first started off as a Program Manager on the Visual Studio Platform team where she helped build IDE features. She is currently with the Customer team and manages the Visual Studio blog. |
Thanks for help, Radhika. I was finally able to find VS 2015 Express ISO images…
broken link provided: http://www.visualstudio.com/…/get-more-user-licenses-vs
When the tokens issued for an MSA expire after 12 hours, why don't you offer signing in via an app password? For example, like is required to use an Outlook.com account in Outlook? It's also hard to understand that signin in via MSA in VS2012 worked without issues (as far as I remember); it didn't ask me to provide my credentials over and over again. This is a good example of breaking a feature that was working flawlessly in the past.
@ DrLeh
The link is now fixed. http://www.visualstudio.com/…/get-more-user-licenses-vs
Radhika Tadinada [MSFT]
Thank you for letting us know.
The link is NOT fixed in Licensing / Purchase #4 above.
Thanks Radhika, Nice consolidation. Hope this blog will be keep updating.
FAQ Question: How to increase the size of the Visual Studio UI font for menus, status bar, title bar, … all in one place?
On a 17 inch widescreen laptop, the effective font size of the menus and other text is less than 8 point.
Q2: Can we set a global minimum font size for VS including all windows, menus, title bars, status bars, …?
any body help me how can i install visual studio 2015 software on my pc
Hi,
I have Installed Visual Studio Enterprise 2015 with Windows 10 SDK. But When I generate a UWP Project then it shows that Project Required a Platform SDK (UAP, Version 10.0.0.0). And when I run the Windows 10 SDK setup then it shows that features installed on this computer are up to date.
Please help me what to do with this.
THANKS.
@Sajid Ali Khan -
That error seems to indicate that something went from during the installation and you did manage to get the Windows 10 tools add-on for Visual Studio to install, but the Win10 SDK did not install for some reason. Could you please get in touch with us offline at unnir at Microsoft dot com so we can get your logs to diagnose the issue?
Thanks,
Unni
Reporting: all links to Visual Studio 2015 SDK seems to be broken.
Someone needs to explain to your product architects that a trial version means a period of time to try out a product. It does not mean a grace period before activation is required.
@Shayan
I don't see any broken links in this blog post. Could you point me to the section / text where you see a broken link?
Radhika Tadinada [MSFT]
@Top – You can customize fonts sizes in the Fonts and Colors dialog as noted here: msdn.microsoft.com/…/hh923906.aspx. The Environment Font will set the font for a lot of the IDE, but then you likely need to go through the rest of the drop down and set that same font size for any other areas that you use.
Thanks,
Cathy Sullivan
Visual Studio IDE Team
A program that runs fine with visual studio 2013 throws a 'System.NullReferenceException' in SharpDX.dll ' on running on visual studio 2015.
statmetstatic void Main()
{
using (var program = new MyGame4())
program.Run(); <- refering to this line of code
}
Arn't older programs compatible with visual studio 2015 ?
It is a little annoying to have to re-log into the MS account or update the license every so often. Is there a permanent solution?
@Sean Liming.
We agree, which is why we are working on some improvements in VS 2015's first Update that will allow VS to refresh its online license for up to a year or more as long as you have an internet connection and a user account with a valid subscription. Keep an eye out for the first CTP and let us know if we've made things better.
We know the short lifecycle of MSA tokens is a general problem in other scenarios like accessing Azure resources as well and we are working on that too.
Was there a 2015 ?Professional? CTP? I don't remember seeing it…which is why I installed the Ultimate CTP and now must uninstall it to install the RTM of Pro.
I got windows 10 final release version.
I downloaded Visual Studio Community 2015
When running, I only selected C++ and Windows Universal apps dev.
When I click next, it asks me confirm install of Windows 8.1 stuff.
Why are the Windows 8.1 stuff needed? I am only interested in installing what is needed, and since I am not developing for 8.1, but for 10, why can't not have 8.1 selected? It does seem to included windows 10 SDK when I select Universal apps.
@anon — The tools for Universal Windows app development do require some Windows 8.1 SDK resources.
-Paul Chapman, VS PM
1. Visual Studio needs 30GB not 10GB as written in recommended hardware requirements.
2. I told the installer NOT to install on C: and i got only 3 GB on the other HDD.
This Visual Studio 2015 FAQ is missing one CRUCIAL thing: the SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS to install and use Visual Studio 2015. What versions of Windows can VS2015 be used on?
@[email protected]
I’m sorry you are having issues. The minimal Visual Studio install is under 10gigs however as you add Features the size will indeed grow.
As to why some components installed on your c: drive or system drive a detailed explanation can be found on this blog post blogs.msdn.com/…/why-visual-studio-11-requires-space-on-the-system-drive.aspx. We are working to transition more components to follow your chosen destination drive.
Pat Litherland
Senior Program Manager
@EP
You can find compatibility and system requirement information in the following places –
1. VS 2015 KB – support.microsoft.com/…/3025135
2. VS 2015 Compatibility – http://www.visualstudio.com/…/visual-studio-2015-compatibility-vs
Radhika Tadinada [MSFT]
Hi, What is the ideal hardware requirement for Visual Studio 2015 community edition ?
#sampath All the system requirements for Visual Studio, TFS, and related products can be found on http://www.visualstudio.com/…/visual-studio-2015-system-requirements-vs.
Puedo crear reportes en visual studio community 2015???
Translated: can I create reports in Visual Studio Community2015?
One of the "improvements" of Visual Studio 2015 is the error checking with squiggles underneath the code. This is rather annoying. Each key stroke there appears a squiggle, until you finish the code line. E.g. if I begin to type "For counter as Integer = 1 to 100" then each key stroke generates a squiggle. When I press ENTER the "Next" statement is generated and the squiggles disappear. But when I am typing the code, I know that the code is not complete until I finished the code line. I don't want to be warned for this kind of errors, which aren't errors.
Can I have an option to go back to the squiggle system of Visual Studio 2010 Pro and 2013 Pro (I have them both, paid versions). To be clear: I don't want to turn off the squiggle system, as it is very useful to detect errors.
Suppose someone is working on a Word document and want to type "I do my homework.". It would be rather ridiculous is he or she would get a warning at "I do my homew" that "homew" is not a correct word. The user off course knows that "ork." is needed to complete the sentence, and needs not a warning.
Maybe some people like the new squiggle system. I certainly do not, it really distracts me from my "thinking".
why i cant sign in into visual studio community 2015?It showing "we ran into a problem"
@Kumaran. Sorry to hear you're having trouble getting signed in. We don't have any known outages right now but there could be specific environment issues. Can you email vsidlic at Microsoft dott c.om and we can collect some logs to get more information.
The VS2015 Professional standalone version is now available as a full version (http://www.microsoftstore.com/…/productID.323825200). Is an upgrade version (such as what was available with VS2013, with lower pricing) planned?
@Jaime
Can you tell me more about the type of reports you are looking to create? Have you created them earlier in Visual Studio?
@ Byron Messerli
Sorry it's taken a bit to respond. VS 2015 as well as VS 2013 support project round tripping so your projects should work across both versions of Visual Studio.
This could be an issue with the version of SharpDX installed on your machine vs what is required. Also, could you clarify if you are using the same exact machine and seeing issues when loading the same exact project in VS 2013 vs VS 2015?
Is MSFT concerned that by charging 500 a year plus for their development environment (and not even the top end one at that) they will promote developers moving to iOS?
Does Visual Studio 2015 require periodic license updates? Our automated build machine has Visual Studio 2013 installed, but if the person that installed it does not log in every 30 days or fewer, open Visual Studio, and manually update the license, then the license expires and automated builds stop working. Surely there must be a better solution than this? Thanks.
I installed VS Professional 2015 about 30 days ago. Now it is telling me "Your Trial has expired. Sign in to extend the trial …" Also in the same window is asking me to sign in to visual studion. When I sign in it tells me "Access Denied because of its content categorization.
Access Denied (content_filter_denied)
Your request was denied because of its content categorization: "Technology/Internet;Office/Business Applications"
For assistance, contact your Help Desk.
Having eagerly waited for the VS2015 Professional standalone version to finally be released, how incredibly disappointing that there is no upgrade pricing from VS2013. Management have no interest in an ongoing expense of £810 per seat per year for the subscription edition, nor are they happy to pay the full price of £506 just to upgrade from the previous version. Looks like my colleagues and I are going to be stuck on VS2013 for the foreseeable future
how to speed up a vBasic project by factor 10.000 ? Otherwise I cannot work with VS2015 and Win10 64bit and 32GB RAM and 2TB SSD
I have installed VS2015_Community_Edition. But it is showing License is expired. Closing this dialog closes VS.
What should I do?
I bought MS VS Pro 2015 from MSstore.com. Then I received a confirmation email with link of Download Now and Product Key. The downlink led me to a place there is nothing downloadable. Then I downloaded a trial version and tried to convert it to a formal version with the product key I received in the mentioned email. Unfortunately the program resounded with "invalid product key". Did anyone experience the similar and know how to resolve the problem.
I tried transferring my old C++ programs from Visual Studio 2010 over to Visual Studio 2015. I keep getting incompatibility errors I never had on VS 2010 whenever I try to debug them on VS 2015. Is there any way to work around this, or would I have to learn the new features of 2015 entirely?
Very disappointing there is no upgrade pricing from VS 2013. Microsoft really need to stop seeing the developer community as a profit center.
In order to use VS 2015 for our corporation, we need it to work for 5 to 10 years without requiring re-activating it periodically. Our applications currently, depending on when they are scheduled for end of life and retirement, are built using VS 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2013 depending on the application.
When an application is mature enough and within 3 years of its end of life, it is not updated to a newer VS version due to development, QA validation, third party library upgrade and deployment cost plus the high cost of fixing new bugs introduced by the upgrade into the application.
Requiring periodic re-activation of Visual Studio 2015 means that MS could end of life VS 2015 much earlier than we need it to build and support our applications.
We have long term support done through a development VM for each application to ensure that we have a working development environment for the application. This is a controlled environment with selective upgrading of the OS, third party libraries and development tools. This keeps the older tools and libraries off our day-to-day developer machines and ensures that an application's development environment will last as long as or longer than the full lifespan of the application.
This is important in an organization with several hundred production applications used in-house developed using one Visual Studio version or another.
Budget cannot be obtained to spend the tens of man months to upgrade each of our applications each time a new OS or Visual Studio version is released.
This is simple application portfolio management for a company that's spent several tens of millions of dollars developing its production applications. This makes business case approval for subscription based development tools much harder to make.
@Samuel, what errors are you seeing? Can you follow up with me at mluparu at Microsoft dotcom?
@Greg. We understand there are scenarios like yours and others where a subscription may not be the right option. Product keys are available for retail versions of VS 2015 to unlock the product and will not require you to periodically re-activate over the internet.
From where I can download Visual studio 2015 Express Edition ISO or Offline installer ?
I am unable to install winows 8 and 8.1 tools in VS 2015 community version . When I try to install some pop up window comes. Please help.
@Anthony MSbuild for C++ used to be available without installing Visual Studio. There was no reason to make this change. Why would anyone need an IDE on their automated build machines? It is ridiculous that we now have to log into our automated build machines every 30 days just to open up the IDE and refresh the license when all that machine does is run builds.
I have a very peculiar problem. I have Windows 10 Pro as an upgrade from Windows 7. Visual Studio 2015 just won't go beyond the splash screen. The problem applies to any version of Visual Studio, being Community, Pro or Enterprise. (This is the release version, not RC or RTM) Visual Studio 2013 does not have the problem. Also Visual Studio Code does not have the problem. I am not sure what the problem is. It is very frustrating especially that I cannot get any feed back or log or anything. I reinstalled it twice to no effect.
Why on earth would a free product bug you and say your trial period is over?
How hard is it to write a small IF statement, to make sure that in the community version this will not popup?
Forcing us to go through the microsoft registration process, is horrible. and by the way, it does not even work.
'We have encountered a problem…" it says. So did I.
Hi, am in Botswana and am trying to create an account so as to be able to use Visual Studio Community edition. Unfortunately in the drop down list, there is not Botswana as such am not able to enter aphone that can be used to send me the code in the text message.
what is windows that visual studio 2015 work with pllllllllllllllez
well I am interested in Unity3d not VS 2015 or any edition but still you have associated VS with it.. It seems that we have to buy VS for it before installing it. That’s wired.
I do not want to install VS in any case What should I do then
I want to know that how to turn visual studio 2015 enterprise edition to expert settings.??
I cannot find “setup” in my installed VS 2015 Community version. I want to create the installer package for my VS 2015 project but I am unable to do that.
Help will be greatly appreciated.
Hi Radhika,
I am using Visual Studio to develop Mobile applications for Android Devices.While installing Visual Studio 10 along with Xamarin in my Windows 10 machine.It is taking lot of time to do complete installation.I selected only few items even though it takes so much time.I selected following items under “Common Tools and Software Developement Kits Section
1.Android Native Development Kit
2.Android SDK
3.Android SDK Setup [API Level 19 ans 21]
4.Android SDK Setup(API level 22)
5.Android SDK Setup(API Level 23)
6.Java SE Development Kit
All above are the 3rd Party tools.Please help me to perform successful installation.
Regards,
Koti
Does anybody encountering the same problem with me that could not sign in for VS 2015 but OK with VS 2013?
I could enter the account and password and the log in window disappear successfully. But it keeps displaying the “Sign in” link with a tooltip “there is already another process of signing in …” in the top right of the VS window.
Could anyone give some help? I’ve already tried to add some site like “live.com” to my trusted site, but it still not works for me.
I have visual studios 2015 installed and had a product key provided to me through my college account but now it says my trail has expired even though it shouldn’t be can I get the product key that was provided first reissues to me?
I was installing Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition on my laptop. But since its battery is weak. it got switched off during installation. how do I confirm that the installation has been done successfully?
I’m trying to launch my VS Community 2015 on another PC User but still the same PC. My VS is shared between all of my PC Users but unfortunately VS asks for license. Also when I sign in as myself it simply ignore my Microsoft account which I used on the first PC User and still asks for license. How can I solve this problem?