Visual Studio 2008 troubleshoot start-up

01 October 2008 markporter

Had a monstrously weird issue with a particular solution file, everything was working fine (opening, building, compiling and even unit testing) then for seemingly no apparent reason the solution wouldn't even open!

I didn't know this was possible but looking at the devenv.exe command line arguments it is possible to log all activity using the /Log switch.  This outputs to an XML file which outputs with an xml-stylesheet processing instruction href to ActivityLog.xsl. Quick scan of the disk didn't find the file, but I found a post on the MSDN forum with the following:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" >

    <xsl:output method="html"  encoding="utf-16"/>

    <xsl:template match="activity">

        <head>

        <title>Activity Monitor Log</title>

        <style type="text/css">

            body{ text-align: left; width: 100%;  font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; }

            table{ border: none;  border-collapse: separate;  width: 100%; }

            tr.title td{ font-size: 24px;  font-weight: bold; }

            th{ background: #d0d0d0;  font-weight: bold;  font-size: 10pt;  text-align: left; }

            tr{ background: #eeeeee}

            td, th{ font-size: 8pt;  padding: 1px;  border: none; }

            tr.info td{}

            tr.warning td{background-color:yellow;color:black}

            tr.error td{background-color:red;color:black}

           

            span {text-decoration:underline}

            a:hover{text-transform:uppercase;color: #9090F0;}

        </style>

        </head>

        <body>     

        <table>

            <tr class="title">

                <td colspan="7">Activity Monitor Log</td>

            </tr>            

            <tr>

                <td colspan="2">infos</td>

                <td colspan="5"><xsl:value-of select="count(entry[type='Information'])"/></td>

            </tr>

            <tr>

                <td colspan="2">warnings</td>

                <td colspan="5"><xsl:value-of select="count(entry[type='Warning'])"/></td>

            </tr>

            <tr>

                <td colspan="2">errors</td>

                <td colspan="5"><xsl:value-of select="count(entry[type='Error'])"/></td>

            </tr>

            <tr>

                <th width="20">#</th>

                <th width="50">Type</th>

                <th>Description</th>

                <th width="280">GUID</th>

                <th>Hr</th>               

                <th>Source</th>

                <th>Time</th>

            </tr>              

            <xsl:apply-templates/>

        </table>

        </body>

    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="entry">

        <!-- example

       

          <entry>

            <record>136</record>

            <time>2004/02/26 00:42:59.706</time>

            <type>Error</type>

            <source>Microsoft Visual Studio</source>

            <description>Loading UI library</description>

            <guid>{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}</guid>

            <hr>800a006f</hr>

            <path></path>

        </entry>

       

        -->

        <xsl:choose>

            <xsl:when test="type='Information'">

                    <tr id="info" class="info">

                        <td><xsl:value-of select="record"/></td>

                        <td></td>

                        <xsl:call-template name="row"/>

                    </tr>               

            </xsl:when>               

            <xsl:when test="type='Warning'">

                    <tr id="warning" class="warning">

                        <td><xsl:value-of select="record"/></td>

                        <td>Warning</td>

                        <xsl:call-template name="row"/>

                    </tr>               

            </xsl:when>            

            <xsl:when test="type='Error'">

                    <tr id="error" class="error">

                        <td><xsl:value-of select="record"/></td>

                        <td>ERROR</td>

                        <xsl:call-template name="row"/>

                    </tr>               

            </xsl:when>               

        </xsl:choose> 

    </xsl:template>

   

    <xsl:template name="row">

                <td id="description"><xsl:value-of select="description"/><xsl:if test="path"><br/>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<xsl:value-of select="path"/></xsl:if></td>

                <td id="guid"><xsl:value-of select="guid"/></td>   

                <td id="hr"><xsl:value-of select="hr"/></td>   

                <td><xsl:value-of select="source"/></td>   

                <td><xsl:value-of select="time"/></td>

    </xsl:template>           

</xsl:stylesheet>




The log should point to issues, but in this case actually didn't finish writing - had to close the activity to make it valid!  Using the /SafeMode switch the solution opened which pointed to a bogus add-in.  That will teach me to install so many random tools to make me more efficient!

        
    

    
    

    

    



  


  
  
    
      
    
  
  
  
  
  



    

    

            
    










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