VS2010 only starts in admin mode since update 11

[onkelhotte]

Hi there,

I just installed the new update 11. Now I cant start VS2010 anymore, I get the error message

"Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation."

When I start VS2010 in administrator mode, everything works fine.

Markus

[Johannes_Rieke]

Hi Markus,

I found the article beneath concerning the VS 2010 error message. Maybe update 11 has nothing to do with it and it is the issue with the .NET 4 conflict coming with windows update. Have you installed SP1 for VS 2010?

http://weblogs.asp.net/mjarguello/archive/2011/04/25/visual-studio-2010-crashes-with-exception-has-been-thrown-by-the-target-of-an-invocation.aspx

Edit: If I had read the blog before I wrote, I had seen, that the SP1 would not help but that a check of the PATH variable should be done. PATH can get corrupted somehow. Steve had written something in an other thread on the matter.

My PATH looks like this:
PATH=C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\Composer XE 2011 SP1\redist\intel64\mkl;C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\Composer XE 2011 SP1\redist\ia32\mkl;C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Intel\Shared Libraries\redist\intel64\mpirt;C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Intel\Shared Libraries\redist\intel64\compiler;C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Intel\Shared Libraries\redist\ia32\mpirt;C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Intel\Shared Libraries\redist\ia32\compiler;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\Binn\

Kind regards,
Johannes

ps: Better I will wait a little bit before I install update 11.

[onkelhotte]

Youre right, my path "was" gone. Then I remembered rule #1 from IT Crowd:

- Have you turned it off and on again?

A reboot helped :-) Now I can start VS as a normal user.

Markus

PS: Rule #2 - Is it plugged in properly?

[Johannes_Rieke]

Hi Markus,

good to hear VS 2010 works again normally. Tomorrow I will give update 11 a try.

Is brace matching in excel style implemented?
One thing, which is on top of my wish list... It's one little thing which dramatically increases the comfort.

Johannes

[onkelhotte]

What do you mean with "brace matching in excel style"?

Finding the closing brace of an opening brace is implemented again.

Markus

[Johannes_Rieke]

Hi there,

I've installed update 11 without any problems so far. VS 2010 starts and compiling works. My path system32 entry is not corrupted or gone. No restart was necessary. Maybe this is because I am local administrator on my machine?

Good luck,
Johannes

[Steven_L_Intel1]

I have installed Update 11 and don't see any change in behavior in VS2010. Even though I am an administrator, VS2010 does not say that it has started in Administrator mode.

[onkelhotte]

Im a local administrator too and friday and this morning I had the error message again. Now I have to start devenv as an administrator.

My path is gone again... What is this??? Its really annoying:-)

Well, maybe this is not IVF related but I first experienced this behaveiour after I installed the latest update.

Markus

[Steven_L_Intel1]

We have seen that Windows sometimes corrupts the path when an installation adds text to the path. No error is given during the install but the contents of PATH is lost. We haven't been able to figure out a pattern to this. You may find a reboot or logout/login helps.

[Johannes_Rieke]

Hi all,

if I understood Markus correctly, he had rebooted his system. Directly after that, everything was normal. But after a new start (next day??) the path was gone again??

However, on my Win 7 X64 SP1 enterprise with VS 2010 Prof. without service pack 1 (but with all updates for .Net 4) all is fine after installation of update 11.

Kind regards,
Johannes

[onkelhotte]

Thanks for all your help... Ilocated the problem.

The IVF Update 11 "caused" the problem, because the installer extended my path > 2048 characters. When your path is longer than 2048 characters, it wont work any more. But not only PATH is screwed, some vital environment variables like %windir% as well.

Now I cleaned my path and removed some entries, now all works fine again... Until I extend my path again ;-)

Markus

Btw: http://www.rapidee.com/en/download is a good editor to manage your path settings. The normal Windows dialog box is a pain in the ...

[Johannes_Rieke]

Hi all,

the same problem seems to be occur on some machines with long %path% variables by installing VTUNE:

http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/showthread.php?t=106093&o=a&s=lr

Could the windows installer for intel software products be the source of the problem?

Kind regards,
Johannes

[onkelhotte]

Here is a screenshot of my path... There are A LOT entries from Intel.

Markus

[Johannes_Rieke]

Hi Markus,

you have installed update 9, 10 and 11 parallel on your computer. I have installed only the newest update and the other uninstalled (automatically by installer). This is the reason, why I am not affected so far and my %PATH% has still some amount of free characters.

Do you really need the fallback to older updates? I know it costs a lot of time, if it is obvious the new update produces errors and older versions work, so, installing/ uninstalling is necessary. I take this risk.

However, there should be another solution.

Kind regards,
Johannes

[Steven_L_Intel1]

We recognize that we are adding a lot to PATH. In the next release, we will add less. As I mentioned above, Windows does not handle well attempts to extend PATH a lot, and different versions of Windows seem to have different limits here.

It is a good idea to remove redundant folders from PATH - you need only the latest of any of the Intel products there as folders later in PATH simply won't get used (DLLs will get resolved earlier.)

[onkelhotte]

Johannes, we develop programs with other companies and we have to use the same compiler version. Thats why I have a lot of IVF compiler version installed parallel on my machine

Steve,can I delete all older IFV entries and just leave the latest in PATH? Can I use the Update 10 version for example when I delete the Update 10 PATH settings?

Markus

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Markus, yes, leave only the latest version in PATH (this should be a single set of entries under Common Files for Composer). For Fortran, you might have update-specific settings for MKL. But the way Windows searches PATH, it will load the first DLL of the right name (and architecture) it sees, so having same-named DLLs later in PATH is pointless. For the compiler, we offer upward compatibility so you can run older EXEs with newer library DLLs. MKL is supposed to be the same.