UPDATED! Intellisense auto-complete is causing VC++ in Visual Studio 2005 SP1 to crash

Question

UPDATE1: I have reinstalled Visual Studio and I am still having this problem. My guess is there is a problem with my environment.

Update2: Diving in. I attached windbg to devenv and set a breakpoint in windbg for msenv!_tailMerge_WINMM_dll and traced through.

This is trying to load winmm.dll using the LoadLibrary API. I can see that LoadLibrary is failing and GetLastError is returning 5 which is "access denied".

now, why would vs be denied access to winmm.dll?

---Begin Original---

I am currently having a serious issue with Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Intellisense in C++. I have an all native solution with on project. Whenever I, or the editor, attempt to invoke intellisense auto-complete pow, Visual Studio crashes. I even tried this with a brand new console app. Ctrl + Space in the empty main and Visual Studio crashes.

I googled for help on this but to no avail. I have tried deleting the ncb file but no luck on that front either.

I am currently working with Intellisense turned off as shown in this article: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/69729/visual-studio-2005-updating-intellisense-hang-up

And I have no crashes, but it sure would be nice to have intellisense back

Call stack from a crash dump.

7c812a6b kernel32!RaiseException+0x53
502717a6 msenv!__delayLoadHelper2+0x139
50675186 msenv!_tailMerge_WINMM_dll+0xd
505ac3c3 msenv!CTextViewIntellisenseHost::UpdateCompletionStatus+0x1a7
505acb50 msenv!CEditView::UpdateCompletionStatus+0x30
505dcfad msenv!CEditView::CViewInterfaceWrapper::UpdateCompletionStatus+0x2a
02ae47fc vcpkg!CCompletionList::DoCompletion+0x444
02ade2ce vcpkg!CAutoComplete::PostProcess+0x240
02ade07f vcpkg!CAutoComplete::OnACParseDone+0x3e
02adac2d vcpkg!CMemberListWorkItem::OnCompleted+0x9d
029eb4e3 vcpkg!CWorkItem::ProcessPendingWorkItemCompletedCalls+0x117
029f8b4f vcpkg!CParserManager::OnIdle+0x183
0299961a vcpkg!CVCPackage::OnIdle+0x48
5014b288 msenv!ATL::CComAggObject<CTextBuffer>::QueryInterface+0x43
5a9d2394 VCProject!ATL::CComPtr<IOleInPlaceFrame>::~CComPtr<IOleInPlaceFrame>+0x24
5a9d2880 VCProject!ATL::CComObject<CVCArchy>::Release+0x10
774fd420 ole32!CRetailMalloc_GetSize+0x21
5009422b msenv!CMsoCMHandler::FContinueIdle+0x23
5009422b msenv!CMsoCMHandler::FContinueIdle+0x23

Answer 1

• Did you try repairing the Visual C++ installation?
• Do you have any plugins installed? Try disabling them.

It might be worth it to delete the .ncb file in the project directory, in case it was corrupted (.ncb is the intellisense database file).

If you're doing C++ development for a living (or at least doing serious development), there's no reason not to use Visual Assist.

Answer 2

I would try the following set of steps to try and fix the problem

• Reset All Settings: Tools -> Import / Export Settings -> Reset All Settings
• Delete HKCU:\Software\Micosoft\VisualStudio\9.0 and then restart VS
• Repair the VS installation through Add Remove Programs
• Disable all 3rd party plugins

Answer 3

Make sure you are up on your service packs, I think VS 2005 is at SP1.

Answer 4

Try "cleaning" the solution, i.e. delete (rename) all temporary files like *.ncb, *.suo etc that have been created by Visual Studio. One of these files might have got corrupted (Your problem sounds like the IntelliSense database is broken).

Answer 5

What a bizarre problem.

I finally figured it out using procmon from sysinternals:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx

My sounds were somehow changed to windows default sounds after a recent trip to IT. This caused visual studio to play a clicking sound when intellisense happens. In order to play this sound winmm.dll must be loaded up, which is located c:\windows\system32\winmm.dll.

I suppose through debugging foray winmm.dll symbols were downloaded to a FOLDER called C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\winmm.dll. Of course this folder looked mighty tasty to Visual Studio, so when it tried to load the winmm.dll folder as a dll file POW!!!

I deleted the folder, and some other .dll folders :) and all is well.

Thanks for your help.