Starting Visual Studio causes all running apps to hang and stop responding

After my laptop fell on the floor and its screen was a little damaged, I was able to continue working with it, but failed to build a project of mine. At some point, the system froze, and I was forced to restart the laptop. Ever since, I’m not able to start Visual Studio 2008 or 2010. Moreover, when I do try to start one of the versions, I see no splash screen, and at some point, all running applications stop responding, and I’m forced to restart the laptop.

When I started Visual Studio 2008 with the /SafeMode flag it started OK and worked perfectly, but when I tried it with Visual Studio 2010, I did see a splash screen and the application main window was opened, but then the system got stuck again and forced me to restart.

I use Windows XP SP3, and the addins I recall I have are Visual Assist, IncrediBuild, and Productivity Power Tools for VS 2010 (how can I check what other addins are installed without having Visual Studio running?)

I tried using the /Log flag to find out what’s happening, but there was nothing that seemed related in the generated log.

At the time of the hang, the CPU and memory of the system was low. The problem happens whether I open Visual Studio with no solution, or with an existing solution.

Do you have any idea why this might happen, or how it can be solved?

Edit:
I run chkdsk /R /V and it is stuck on "1 percent completed." for hours now. Is there anything I can do? I'll try to re-install Visual Studio 2010 next week, when I'm in the office. I hope that will help.

Thanks a lot,
splintor

Reinstalling is my last resort. If I'll get to that, I'll probably install Windows 7 and reinstall the entire machine, but I want to first see if I can handle it without it.

splintor 2010-09-02 09:08:19

Almost every restart (since it is forced restart by long press of the power button) issues a check disk (which makes it even more painful).That's why I thought it's not a disk problem. I'll try to schedule a full disk check and see if it helps.

splintor 2010-09-02 09:01:39

As I said in my edit, running chkdsk /R seems to get stuck. Any idea?

splintor 2010-09-03 04:56:58

If chkdsk /r hangs, it sounds as though the drive is damaged. You *may* be lucky and just have data loss (which can't be repaired). At this stage, you really need to get the hard drive checked on the sector level. However, it crashing implies, at least to me, that the drive itself is physically damaged. Having experienced this first hand, I'd advise getting the it replaced as an absolutel priority, it could completely give up at any time depending on how damaged it is... Any attempty to read/write from sectors which are damaged are wasted time/effort and data... Sorry :(

Dave 2010-09-06 13:06:08

You were right. IT checked and replaced my HDD.

splintor 2010-09-12 18:36:20

And yet, the least productive answer gets accepted.

Dave 2010-09-13 15:25:35

I don't see anything in the event log that seems related. What should I look for?

splintor 2010-09-02 09:02:15

In the system event log look for errors with category ntfs.

imoatama 2010-09-06 04:20:33

I was going to install Windows 7, so this is not a real problem. However, it seems only part of it was damaged in the fall, and it only affects the starting of Visual Studio. Is this a sign, and the rest of the hard disk is to come, or maybe, if I uninstall and reinstall Visual Studio I can bypass the problem?

splintor 2010-09-04 18:37:39

The fact that chkdsk can't fix things doesn't bode well and you're likely to experience problems with other things. You can check this for yourself if you have the patience, by running a 3rd party low level disk check tool on the drive. One possibility would be to download the SystemRescueCD and run TestDisk on the drive.

imoatama 2010-09-06 04:19:44

My IT staff agreed with you. They ordered a replacement HDD, which was for free, as it was under the warranty. I have now installed Windows 7 on that new HDD, and everything work fine. (The screen still need to be replaced, and that will cost my employer $190, but that's a different story...)

splintor 2010-09-12 18:35:07

ansaurus

tags:

views:

answers:

Starting Visual Studio causes all running apps to hang and stop responding

related questions