Visual Studio _Instances folder

George Hendrickson 176 Reputation points
2021-10-05T01:23:17.58+00:00

I managed to screw up my Visual Studio 2019 install by trying out some PC cleaner tool thats supposed to clean up temp files, etc. It wiped out my _Instances folder for Visual Studio that Visual Studio Installer uses to mange the installation with. The only option that I've found is to reinstall Visual Studio but that would wipe out all the extensions I use and would have to reinstall again. Does anyone know of any tool that would regenerate these files that doesn't require reinstalling Visual Studio?
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  1. George Hendrickson 176 Reputation points
    2021-10-06T01:59:56.393+00:00

    Well, i managed to fix it. All the json files were missing from the packages folder for all the components. I copied them back from another install from another pc and it worked then.. note to self.. DO NOT CLEAN TEMP FILES WITH PC CLEANER EVER AGAIN..

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  1. Limitless Technology 39,341 Reputation points
    2021-10-05T10:36:25.113+00:00

    Hello,

    do you have any backup of Visual Studio files? Visual Studio 2019 has backup files in %localappdata%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\BackupFiles

    Or %appdata%\Local\Temp\VSFeedbackIntelliCodeLogs\Suggestions\XXX\output\versions

    Where XXXX is the nearest time in which you were working on the deleted files, so it might help you find something there.

    More under:

    Revisit VS Code folder structure for app data, settings, extensions in gitHub

    https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/3884

    --If the reply is helpful, please Upvote and Accept as answer--

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  2. George Hendrickson 176 Reputation points
    2021-10-06T00:12:15.77+00:00

    There were no backups in those locations but I was able to copy the files from a different install from another computer that has the same version installed that I do. I can now see the installs within Visual Studio Installer but when I click on Modify to check everything, I get this message now. Can I install that by itself?
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