What to do if I get package load failures in the final release of VS 2005?

Article
11/09/2005

IMPORTANT UPDATE - I have posted an updated set of steps for working around package load failures . Please read that blog post instead of this post because it contains additional information not listed here. I do not want to take this post down because I want to keep the comments so others can read them, but this post is essentially obsolete due to the new blog entry I have posted.

Since the final release of Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0, I have heard from several customers who have been using beta versions of VS, SQL and .NET 2.0, and have followed the uninstall steps to the best of their ability (including trying the auto-uninstall tool linked at the top of the uninstall instructions page) but are still encountering Package Load Failure error messages in the VS IDE after installing the final release.

If you currently have the final release of any version of VS 2005 installed (including the Express Editions), and you are encountering package load failures, here is what I recommend that you do to resolve these issues:

1. Try to run the VS 2005 troubleshooting tool

Before trying the next set of steps, please download and run the VS 2005 troubleshooting tool. This tool is built on the same code base as the auto-uninstall tool, but it has knowledge of some specific problems that existed in previous beta versions of VS 2005 and knows how to go in and surgically clean them up.

2. Try to run the following command line to clear out the native image cache

Click on the Start menu, choose Run and type cmd, then type rd /s /q %windir%\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32\Microsoft.VisualStu# and press enter to remove native images from the cache.

3. Manually search for orphaned files in the GAC

I have found that there are some cases where some additional files are getting orphaned on the machine that my test scenarios haven't caught yet (because we shipped a lot of different beta versions and I don't have the time to test out every uninstall permutation, etc). If I haven't seen the issue in my testing, it hasn't been added to the troubleshooting tool and therefore that tool won't always be helpful.

In general, the orphaned files that cause package load failures are located in the GAC (which is located at %windir%\assembly on your machine). So, if you have already run the troubleshooting tool and are still running into package load failures, here are some additional steps that have proven useful in identifying additional orphaned files:

Download the FSnap tool and extract it to c:\fsnap.exe on your machine
Run c:\fsnap.exe /bs c:\windows\assembly\ > c:\file_list.txt
Look at the contents of c:\file_list.txt for any files with version number 2.0.xxxxx.xx or 8.0.xxxxx.xx where the xxxxx.xx is not equal to 50727.42
Remove the files that fit this criteria using gacutil.exe (which is installed to %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin if you have VS 2005 installed and chose to install the .NET Framework SDK tools, or can be installed by installing the .NET Framework 2.0 SDK) or by using DOS commands in a cmd prompt

I have found it useful to import the contents of c:\file_list.txt into Excel and then sort alphabetically by column G (which is the file version column). That makes it easier to zero in on files that have suspicious version information.

Please note that you will need to change the paths in the steps above if you have your OS installed on a drive other than C. Also, make sure that you include the trailing \ after the "assembly" folder name or else the FSnap tool will not work correctly.

4. Help me make the troubleshooting tool better

If you use FSnap and manually delete files and that resolves the package load failures you are seeing, I would appreciate it if you could let me know which files you removed that fixed the issue (either via the contact form or a comment on this post). If I see common problems that the tool is not yet able to fix, I can add them to the tool and post an updated version to help everyone else out who might hit the same issue.

Hopefully this will help resolve any lingering package load failure issues that you might be seeing. If these steps still do not work please contact me and let me know.

<update date="11/18/2005"> Added an additional step to clear out the native image cache based on findings I posted here </update>

<update date="12/16/2005"> Added an updated link to a newer set of steps at the top of this blog post </update>

Comments

Anonymous
November 09, 2005
I found two directories under C:windowsassembly

NativeImages_v2.0.50215_32
NativeImages_v2.0.40426_32

What should I do?
Anonymous
November 10, 2005
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
November 10, 2005
Thanks Aaron. But occasionally I got “Smart Device Package” load failure error while your troubleshooting tool does not find any issues.
Anonymous
November 10, 2005
Hi fd - for that kind of error, you will need to follow step 2 in this blog post to gather a list of files and try to locate the orphaned older versioned file(s) and delete them manually. I have seen a few cases where the troubleshooting tool does not remove all problematic files unfortunately.
Anonymous
November 10, 2005
Thanks again Aaron. I ran the FSnap tool and it seems that every folder and file in the two directories I mentioned above has a corresponding row in the output file. Should I use "rd" or "gacutil" to remove them?
Anonymous
November 10, 2005
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
November 11, 2005
I was having a problem where when I started a new project and selected the first windows form created (Form1.vb or .cs) I would get an error loading the Windows Forms Designer and windows Forms Designer Hosting packages. When I ran FSnap I noticed all of the Infragistics controls I had loaded for a project two years ago had a version number of 2.0.5001.19

infragistics.shared.v2.dll
infragistics.win.ultrawindock.v2.dll
infragistics.win.ultrawineditors.v2.dll
infragistics.win.ultrawinexplorerbar.v2.dll
infragistics.win.ultrawingrid.v2.design.dll
infragistics.win.ultrawingrid.v2.dll
infragistics.win.ultrawinlistbar.v2.dll
infragistics.win.ultrawinmaskededit.v2.dll
infragistics.win.ultrawinschedule.v2.dll
infragistics.win.ultrawinstatusbar.v2.dll
infragistics.win.ultrawintabbedmdi.v2.dll
infragistics.win.ultrawintabcontrol.v2.dll
infragistics.win.ultrawintoolbars.v2.dll
infragistics.win.ultrawintree.v2.dll
infragistics.win.v2.dll

When I uninstalled Infragistics Version 2.0 my problem was solved.
Anonymous
November 15, 2005
Hi Aaron. I'd just like to say thanks for all the help you are posting on this matter, I am one of a large number of frustrated people trying to make VS 2005 work :) Anyway, onto my problem:-

I ran FSnap and it reported quite a few assemblies with version 2.0.50727.26. I'm a bit stuck now as I don't know how to get rid of them with gacutil.

As an example, I have this one:

Path: c:windowsassemblyNativeImages_v2.0.50727_32Accessibilityf3e77159b2a70c49bbb42ea4b363aeda
File: accessibility.ni.dll
Version: 2.0.50727.26

So, I figure I need to get rid of Accessibility. So I tried this:

gacutil /u Accessibility

But that gives me this:

Microsoft (R) .NET Global Assembly Cache Utility. Version 2.0.50727.42
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Assembly: Accessibility, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a, processorArchitecture=MSIL
Unable to uninstall: assembly is required by one or more applications
Pending references:
SCHEME: <OPAQUE> ID: <{7A1ADD0C-17F3-47B8-B033-A06E189C835D}> DESCRIPTION : <.NET Framework Redist Setup>
SCHEME: <OPAQUE> ID: <{7131646D-CD3C-40F4-97B9-CD9E4E6262EF}> DESCRIPTION : <.NET Framework Redist Setup>

Assembly: Accessibility, Version=1.0.5000.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a
Unable to uninstall: assembly is required by one or more applications
Pending references:
SCHEME: <WINDOWS_INSTALLER> ID: <MSI> DESCRIPTION : <Windows Installer>
Number of assemblies uninstalled = 0
Number of failures = 0

Somewhere in that I noticed its trying to get rid of version 50727.42. Can you help?
Anonymous
November 15, 2005
Update:

I managaed to get rid of these by manually deleting them from the windowsassembly folder in DOS, but I still get the same problems. Am I doomed to format?
Anonymous
November 18, 2005
I've tried running through the steps shown above and still cannot get VS2005 to run without package load errors. The trouble shooting tool does not find any problems but the fsnap tool does list several items in the GAC with version numbers other than 50727.

The problem is when I use gacutil to try and remove them it happily informs me that I cannot remove the items as they are in use by the Windows Installer.

I did not run any of the betas of VS2005 on this system, but I did run a beta of the Monad Shell so it would appear this is the cause of the problems in my instance.

Any help in getting VS2005 to run would be appreciated as I would rather avoid having to format and reinstall my system just to get the IDE to run.

Thanks.
Anonymous
November 18, 2005
Hey all - I have investigated some of these package load failures further and found another possible fix. I added it to this post as a new step #2 and moved the remaining steps down in the list. Please try that step if you haven't already and hopefully it will help you resolve some of these issues.

Hope this helps!
Anonymous
November 25, 2005
Aaron,

trying step 2 I get a whole heap of access denied
even when runas administrator, I also tried running cacls to grant full permission to the directory, but that did not help.

In my case my error is:
visual studio explorers and designers package failed to load

I've got a small number of files versioned 8.0.50215.44 after listing them with fsnap under %windir%assemblyGAC_MSIL

not all are "Microsoft.*", and of the Microsoft ones one is VisualC rather than VisualStudio prefixed, are these all still correct to remove?

Any other suggestions?

Thanks

Kevin
Anonymous
November 26, 2005
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
November 26, 2005
I am sorry. I tried again doing exactly what you wrote and this time it worked. Maybe it was the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Editors file in C:windowsassemblygac_msil.

Anyhow, thank you for this blog.
Anonymous
November 26, 2005
Hi Kevin (hxpro) - the troubleshooting tool listed in step 1 above should remove the v8.0.50215.44 versions of the files that you mention. I am not sure why you would be hitting those access denied errors though - possibly you still have Visual Studio or SQL Server running and have files in use? You may want to try to reboot and then run that command in step 2 again.

Hope this helps. If not, please contact me using http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/contact.aspx and I can try to help further...
Anonymous
December 06, 2005
Aaron,
I get this Package Load Failure after I install the Report Designer add-in for Visual Web Developer Express. I have VS.Net 2003 installed side by side with SQL Server 2000 & RS Developer edition as also SQL Server 2005 Express. Is it such that you need to have SQL Server 2005 Standard or Workgroup or Enterprise installed for this add-in to work or is it something else? I tried out the tools given above with my Express setups, still get the same error. I just want to experiment with Express editions before I install the VS 2005 Professional/Standard editions. The OS is Windows 2000 SP4 if this has got something to do with it?

Thanks

Mani
Anonymous
December 06, 2005
Hi Mani - Running this on Windows 2000 should not cause the error with any greater likelihood than Windows XP or higher. Could you please try running the following command from a cmd prompt and see if it helps solve this for you:

rd /s /q %windir%assemblyNativeImages_v2.0.50727_32

If this does not work, can you please send me the output from the FSnap tool listed above? You can send it to aaronste@microsoft.com.
Anonymous
December 08, 2005
Hi Aaron,
Also, the same problem is replicated in a Wiondows XP SP2 machine too if the Express Edition is the only edition of VS/SS 2005 installed. For a change I tried installing VWD Express 2005 on a machine that has VS 2005 Professional Edition with SS 2005 Express and the add-in worked perfectly fine without any issues, so what could be the real problem out here?

Thanks

Mani
Anonymous
December 14, 2005
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 14, 2005
Hi Brandon - Those access denied errors are most likely caused by files being in use. You can try to reboot and run the rd /s /q command again, or alternatively make sure that VS 2005 is not running when you try to run that command.

Also, if the gacutil command is not working correctly, you may need to use a cmd prompt and manually delete those files instead of using gacutil.

I'm sorry for the inconvenience and hassles here.
Anonymous
December 14, 2005
Aaron,

Thanks for the speedy response.

As you suggested, the access denied errors were solved by a reboot. The RD command ran to completion without any errors. For other readers, I did not have VS2005 running when I attempted running RD, however I had had it running prior to this so I guess that the assemblies were locked in memory by some other process.

As reported previously the gacutil still did not run, reporting that the mentioned assemblies were not found.

The information provided by another run of FSnap still indicated that the offending assemblies were still to be removed. These assemblies were all located in the %windir%assemblyGAC_MSIL directory. Using Windows Explorer I could not see a subdirectory called GAC_MSIL [hidden or otherwise]. It was only when I went into the command prompt and went to %windir%assembly and then used dir /w/p that I was able to see the GAC_MSIL directory and thence the underlying assembly subdirectories.

Based on a guess from what you, and the other writers, have written I attempted several variations before hitting on the following approach:

cd GAC_MSIL
rmdir /s microsoft.visualc.applicationverifier
rmdir /s microsoft.visualstudio.qualitytools.loadtestframework
rmdir /s microsoft.visualstudio.qualitytools.recorderbar
rmdir /s microsoft.visualstudio.qualitytools.resource
rmdir /s microsoft.visualstudio.qualitytools.unittestframework
rmdir /s microsoft.visualstudio.qualitytools.webtestframework
rmdir /s microsoft.visualstudio.teamsystem.performancewizard

Since I like the confirmation step I used 'rmdir /s' rather than 'rmdir /q/s' and answered Y to each of the questions.

I then used good old dir /w/p to confirm that the assemblies were no longer present. And, just to be on the safe side, I reran FSNap and all the noted assemblies were gone from that list as well!

So, it looks like the assemblies may now be gone and I can go back to seeing if I get any package errors. Certainly it look likes all the criteria you have documented are now met.

As a final comment on this, the rmdir process was not really any more difficult than creating the GACUTIL commands mentioned in the previous post and was certainly more successful.

Once again thanks for your assistance.

Regards,
Brendon
Anonymous
December 14, 2005
Aaron,

I am the bearer of bad news. I left VS 2005 open for a substantial period of time to see if any pack load failures would spontanteously appear and none did. I then selected a 'recent project' and received a series of package load failures as outlined below.

After initial selection of the project I received the message:

Package Load Failure

Package 'StanPackage' has failed to load properly ( GUID = {72391CE3-743A-4A55-8927-4217541F6517} ). Please contact package vendor for assistance. Application restart is recommended, due to possible environment corruption. Would you like to disable loading this package in the future? You may use 'devenv /resetskippkgs' to re-enable package loading.

Then, as I was writing this blog comment another dialog popped up showing:

Package Load Failure

Package 'Visual Studio Common IDE Package' has failed to load properly ( GUID = {6E87CFAD-6C05-4ADF-9CD7-3B7943875B7C} ). Please contact package vendor for assistance. Application restart is recommended, due to possible environment corruption. Would you like to disable loading this package in the future? You may use 'devenv /resetskippkgs' to re-enable package loading.

Then when I closed the dialogue boxes I received the following message:

Package Load Failure

Package 'Visual Studio Common IDE Package' has failed to load properly ( GUID = {6E87CFAD-6C05-4ADF-9CD7-3B7943875B7C} ). Please contact package vendor for assistance. Application restart is recommended, due to possible environment corruption. Would you like to disable loading this package in the future? You may use 'devenv /resetskippkgs' to re-enable package loading.

I am stuck at this point. What is the appropriate course of action now? [And, unfortunately, reloading the OS is not an acceptable answer :-)]

Regards,
Brendon.
Anonymous
December 15, 2005
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 15, 2005
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 15, 2005
Brendon,

I was in the same position as you..nothing working, quite frustrated and ready to format my hard drive.

I followed Aaron's most recent post, the one you followed and it worked perfectly. I am looking at your chain of events and I think what you are missing is the uninstall of Visual Studio 2005 at the very beginning of your steps. This is not refering to VS2005 Beta uninstall, but an uninstall of the stable release build - get rid of it too.

Then follow the steps you followed. A good way to see if everything is gone is to run an FSnap, import it into Excel and search for any 2.0.* or 8.0.* - if nothing is there, go ahead and reinstall VS2005 final release.

Good luck.
Shaun
Anonymous
December 15, 2005
Shaun,

Hi.

Thanks for taking the time to read the notes and follow up with some commentary.

I wish that the solution was that simple, what you have picked up on is more a documentation fault on my part than anything. I definitely did the uninstall of the VS2005 as part of following the steps outlined by Aaron in the http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/support/uninstall/default.aspx post [it is step 13 in this list, I just checked]. Since I had long ago removed all traces of the Beta products [or so I hope] I also took his notes to mean 'do it to the product ignoring Beta' which is what I have done.

Having said that I did not go back into the Assembly directory and rerun FSnap [so that's what Aaron meant by pt 7]. Sounds like you suspect this might be at fault?

Educated guess from you: should I redo everything and see how it comes out?

Regards,
Brendon
Anonymous
December 15, 2005
Hi Brendon - I'm very sorry that you're still running into this issue. All of the cases of Package Load Failure error messages that I have seen have been caused by some kind of problem with assemblies in the GAC (%windir%assembly). I would suggest trying to redo the steps that I sent, but to follow Shaun's suggestion to search your system using fsnap after everything is uninstalled and make sure that there are not any other assemblies leftover in the GAC. If you would like, you can send me the fsnap output and I can try to take a look before you reinstall everything again. You can send it to aaronste@microsoft.com.

Also, did you install any VS 2005 add-ins while you had the VS beta installed? I don't recognize the "StanPackage" package so I wonder if that is installed by a 3rd party add-in and there is some kind of bug with that.
Anonymous
December 15, 2005
Still no luck, tried out everything, same thing goes for my laptop too, it just refuses to work, no matter what you try and do, my laptop has VS 2002 installed side-by-side with XP SP2 while my dev PC in office has Win2K SP4 installed and VS 2003 side-by-side, so do you think if these softwares have anything to do with the trouble? And FSnap quietly says no assemblies installed that starts with 2.0 or 8.0, so I think after those steps, everything is wiped off completely, still not sure, but the thing is ReportViewer works, I know I did the illegal thing, have a trial version of VS 2005 Professional , installed it copied the DLL's for it (found the DLL's mentione din the SQL Reporting Services forum by some Rajeev Karunakaran or someone of similar name), installed them into GAC and viewer works, as for designer I found one open source RDL Designer which would keep me company hopefully till this is done, or I can always author the RDL files as per the examples/specifications found on the MS Site, but would love to get this working if only as a challenge since work is bit slack nowadays due to holiday season!!!

Mani
Anonymous
December 16, 2005
Hi Mani - All of the package load failures I have seen in the past have been caused by something bad left behind in the GAC (%windir%assembly) on the machine.

Can you please try to re-run steps 1-6 listed in my comment above and then use the Fsnap tool to gather a list of all of the files in %windir%assembly on your system? You can find instructions for running Fsnap in step 3 of the main blog post above. After running Fsnap, please send me the output file at aaronste@microsoft.com so I can take a look...
Anonymous
December 19, 2005
Finally! Step #3 above worked for me. Thanks!
Anonymous
December 19, 2005
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 19, 2005
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
December 19, 2005
Hi Mani - It sounds like you have already found my updated Package Load Failure blog post at http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2005/12/16/504906.aspx and tried that as well. If the only package load error you are seeing is coming from the add-in that you mention, I think it would be good to try to manually remove it and then reinstall it as well. I don't know much about that add-in, so I'm not sure the best way to tell you to remove it. You may want to copy and paste the GUID value from the package load failure error dialog and then search for that GUID in your registry or something along those lines.
Anonymous
January 01, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
January 01, 2006
Uninstalling the "Device Command Shell" fixed the problem.
Anonymous
January 05, 2006
Many thanks...

After 4 days (shorter than some, I think) I have finally got rid of the package loading errors.

I used the VS troubleshooting tool, but I had to re-install the whole package VSWD express that I had downloaded as an ISO CD from MS.

The version that I had been trying to load may or may not have been the problem. It came with the 'Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition for Dummies' book that I have purchased.

Now I can start the uphill learning curve !
Anonymous
April 28, 2006
Here is a SIMPLE solution.

Try removing
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftMSDN8.0Packages{6E87CFAD-6C05-4adf-9CD7-3B7943875B7C}CodeBase" registry value and "SatelliteDll" registry subkey.

It must solve this problem.
Anonymous
April 28, 2006
Hi ComputerJin - There are a lot of possible root causes of package load failures. This fix may help in some cases, but it might not in some others. There is a comprehensive list of workarounds at http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2005/12/16/504906.aspx that I recommend everyone take a look at if they are running into package load failures in VS 2005.
Anonymous
June 07, 2006
If
you had installed Visual Studio .NET 2005 Beta1, you may run into
problems using the final release...
Anonymous
June 19, 2006
PingBack from http://www.eddieoneverything.com/windows-xp/working-around-the-1935-error-with-hresult-0x80131532-when-installing-visual-studio.php
Anonymous
June 20, 2006
PingBack from http://odalet.wordpress.com/2006/03/10/reparer-visual-studio-2005/
Anonymous
September 01, 2006
If you had installed Visual Studio .NET 2005 Beta1, you may run into problems using the final release
Anonymous
November 18, 2006
Ever since the final version of Visual Studio 2005 was released, I have been hearing from customers who
Anonymous
April 07, 2008
I get the package load failures in vs 2008. I would like to know if the version numbers mentioned in the first few paragraphs up the top in this blog for removing files ("...is not equal to 50727.42" ) is still applicable or it is a different #s that we need to use for vs2008 as opposed to that for vs 2005
Anonymous
April 07, 2008
Hi Srinimv - The version for VS 2008 is 9.0.21022.08. However, as noted at the top of this blog post, this technique for manual removal is typically only useful if a previous beta of the VS product in question was installed on the system in the past. If you didn't have a previous beta of VS 2008, this technique will likely not help. What I suggest trying to do to narrow down package load failures further is to run devenv.exe with logging enabled like the following: "%ProgramFiles%Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0Common7IDEdevenv.exe" /log %temp%devenv_log.txt. Then go look in %temp%devenv_log.txt in Notepad and search for errors or warnings. The errors/warnings will list HResult values that you can hopefully use to narrow down the root cause of the package load failures further. Note, the path to devenv.exe listed above is for a default install of VS 2008. The path will be different if you are trying to launch VS 2005 (it will be in the Microsoft Visual Studio 8 folder instead of the 9.0 folder). The path will also be different if you have VS installed to a non-default path.
Anonymous
May 26, 2008
Hello, I have an error in vs 2008 on Vista SP1. I've never had vs 2005 beta or a vs 2008 beta on the machine. Package Load Failure Package 'Visual Studio Explorers and Designers Package' has failed to load properly ( GUID = {8D8529D3-625D-4496-8354-3DAD630ECC1B} ). Please contact package vendor for assistance. Application restart is recommended, due to possible environment corruption. Would you like to disable loading this package in the future? You may use 'devenv /resetskippkgs' to re-enable package loading Info from logged session: <entry> <record>10</record> <time>2008/05/26 11:46:42.776</time> <type>Error</type> <source>Microsoft Visual Studio</source> <description>Error checking App Path</description> <hr>80070005 - E_ACCESSDENIED</hr> </entry> <entry> <record>117</record> <time>2008/05/26 11:46:51.627</time> <type>Error</type> <source>Microsoft Visual Studio</source> <description>SetSite failed for package [Visual Studio Explorers and Designers Package]</description> <guid>{8D8529D3-625D-4496-8354-3DAD630ECC1B}</guid> <hr>80131527</hr> <errorinfo>COM object that has been separated from its underlying RCW cannot be used.</errorinfo> </entry> <entry> <record>118</record> <time>2008/05/26 11:46:51.631</time> <type>Error</type> <source>Microsoft Visual Studio</source> <description>End package load [Visual Studio Explorers and Designers Package]</description> <guid>{8D8529D3-625D-4496-8354-3DAD630ECC1B}</guid> <hr>80131527</hr> <errorinfo>COM object that has been separated from its underlying RCW cannot be used.</errorinfo> </entry> I have tried to repair vs. I appreciate any suggestion.
Anonymous
May 26, 2008
Hi Jibbers42 - I'm not sure what would be causing this kind of error. Since you are getting an access denied error, you may want to try to fix the file and registry permissions on your system. Steps like the ones at http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2006/09/04/solving-setup-errors-by-using-the-subinacl-tool-to-repair-file-and-registry-permissions.aspx might be helpful for that. If that doesn't help, then I'd suggest posting a question on one of the Visual Studio forums at http://forums.microsoft.com to see if anyone there can help suggest any other workarounds.

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What to do if I get package load failures in the final release of VS 2005?

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