Difficulty getting XE2016 with VS2013 integration to start after install

[Elias_Sabbagh]

Hi folks!

Windows 7, x64

I upgraded to XE 2016 from XE 2015 on VS2010 yesterday evening, and I've been chasing horrifying behavior all night.  According to the installer, I first needed to download and install the Windows 8.1 SDK in order to support VS2013, so I did that, installing the entire suite of tools, and received no errors.  I then restarted the XE2016 installer, and got no error messages.  Immediately after installing, I tried to run the IDE, and immediately got an exception message.  Reinstalling via the "repair" and "modify" selections didn't help.  Rebooting, then reinstalling didn't help.  Rebooting, then removing all older versions of the compiler and IDE, then rebooting again, then reinstalling from scratch, then "repairing," seems to have gotten me to a point where the VS2013 IDE starts up, but fails to load a number of packages -- 'UserNotifications' and 'Global Search Package' -- and then crashes.

I've even removed a number of other development tools in order to shrink the length of the PATH environment variable, but, since the Intel paths occur earliest, I'm not even sure that's the problem.  I'm goofing around with repairing the Window 8.1 SDK installation, but I figured I'd at least ask for help while I continue to experiment.

Has anybody else seen this sort of behavior?

Thanks,

Elias Sabbagh

[mecej4]

Is your operating system version suitable (as described in the release notes for the compiler that you are installing)? I have a vague recollection that you require SP1 on Windows 7 for the current compiler and tools to work. Please see https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-parallel-studio-xe-2016-release-notes . At the top of Page-5, I see this: Microsoft Windows 7 SP1* or newer, or Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1* or newer operating system.

[Elias_Sabbagh]

Yep, I'm at SP1.  In addition to that, I've been downloading and installing various Windows Updates all morning, hoping to get lucky...

I wonder if for some reason there's a bug in the complete installer compared to the online installer?  Not that Intel would let something like that slip by, but I'm grasping at straws here.

My next guess is to suppose that I shouldn't have installed everything from the Windows 8.1 SDK, but only the initial item as mentioned in Steve Lionel's installation note.  I want to exhaust a few other ideas before doing yet another uninstall/reinstall cycle, though.

There's also some info from the startup log that VS2013 emits, in an XML file called ActivityLog.xml.  There's a few choice errors in there, and I'm attaching the file to this post as a TXT file.

Thanks in advance, anyone with ideas...
 

[Greg_T_]

Hi Elias,

What you've described sounds similar to the install problem I've seen: https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-visual-fortran-compiler-for-windows/topic/595299.  I also have Win 7 SP1 X64 on a Lenovo laptop.  Do you have other versions of Visual Studio installed that are affected by the Fortran XE2016 install?  I've found that installing Fortran XE2016 for integration to VS2013 for some reason causes VS2012 and VS2015 to not start, and give errors in the ActivityLog.xml file that you mentioned.  I've used a system restore point to revert back to using Fortran XE2015 in VS2012 for now.

Steve and Kevin at Intel recently pointed me to these to links that may have helpful information:

https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/troubleshooting-fortran-integration-issues-with-visual-studio

https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/problem-fortran-source-files-not-compiled-when-building-in-visual-studio

Regards,
Greg

[Steven_L_Intel1]

I would not have expected the VS2013 Shell to be installed if you already had VS2010, but it should work. I suggest uninstalling Parallel Studio XE and the Visual Studio 2013 Shell (which will be a separate entry, I think, in Programs and Features.) There may also be an entry for Visual Studio Tools and Libraries for Intel Visual Fortran).  Then reinstall.

[Elias_Sabbagh]

Thanks for the responses everyone!  I'll follow the links, but first I have new information:

I've attempted back to XE2015 on VS2010 by uninstalling XE2016, then rebooting, then uninstalling the leftover parts of VS2013 (BTW, if one doesn't reboot in between those step, the VS2013 uninstaller doesn't start up).  Now things are really scary, because I'm getting the same exception on startup with XE2015/VS2010 that I was seeing with XE2016/VS2013!  I think rolling back to a restore point from three days ago and then trying stuff is my next plan -- pending whatever I find from Greg's links.

More soon...

[Elias_Sabbagh]

1) I'd seen Greg's earlier links before, and everything checked out for me.  I don't think any missing integration DLLs were the problem.

2) I didn't attempt a system restore, because I didn't have a deep enough list of system restore points to choose from!  We're doing this without a net...

3) OK, some better news -- for some reason, XE2015/VS2010 seems to run now.  Perhaps I needed to reboot.  During the build of my projects I now get a LINK1123 error pertaining to CVTRES.EXE, which means that my path is somehow crossed up, but I think I'll be able to get that problem figured out -- I might just rename it and see if another version is picked up from somewhere else in the path.

The CVTRES.EXE path problem seems to indicate that I'm going to be floundering in DLL hell for a while, with different versions of things appearing at the wrong places in the path really confusing the XE installer(s).

[Elias_Sabbagh]

Additional info:  Here are the IDE/compiler versions that are currently running on my machine (even though there's that silly CVTRES.EXE problem)--

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
Version 10.0.30319.1 RTMRel
Microsoft .NET Framework
Version 4.5.51209 RTMRel

Installed Version: IDE Standard

Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2010   01011-532-2002361-70784
Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2010

Intel® Parallel Studio XE 2015 Composer Edition for Fortran Windows*     Package ID: w_fcompxe_2015.5.280
Intel® Parallel Studio XE 2015 Update 5 Composer Edition for Fortran Windows* Integration for Microsoft Visual Studio* 2010, Version 15.0.0127.2010, Copyright © 2002-2015 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved.
* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

Security Update for Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Integrated) - ENU (KB2644980)   KB2644980
This security update is for Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Integrated) - ENU.
If you later install a more recent service pack, this security update will be uninstalled automatically.
For more information, visit http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2644980.

I'm really curious why the XE2016 installer says it can't find VS2010 on my box when it starts up, and leads me down the path of installing the Win8.1 SDK, VS2013, etc.  Is it because the vs2010 that's installed is just a "shell" version?

[Elias_Sabbagh]

SOLVED

Went back to a fresh install of XE2016/VS2013 on top of the existing XE2015/VS2010.  Again, the installer insisted that it couldn't find VS2010, so I installed the Win8.1 SDK first.  However, and crucially, this time I only selected the top checkbox.  At least on my machine, it seems like this prevents competing versions of the .NET SDK from tripping each other up, but I'm of course not sure why the magic works, just that it does.  I then continued on with the online version of the XE2016 installer, and after 45 minutes or so, rebooted the machine when it was done.  The IDE fired up the first time, and my projects built without issue.

Thanks for the tips, everyone!  Time to get back to work.