Visual studio 2017 installer won't run after extracting

One of my co-workers encountered the same problem. We spent 4 hours searching for solutions, uninstalling VS and other software that we thought might be the culprit.

In the end, THIS LINK helped us figure it out. The problem is somehow explained there and is linked to NODE_OPTIONS variable. If you have that variable set, remove it then restart your computer. This solved his problem.

Configuration: Widows 10, Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise.

I hope this helps you

I was able to resolve my problem after 4 days of troubleshooting with Microsoft support. I'm developing on a Dell laptop and the support technician believes one of the Dell services was causing issues with the winmgmt service.

Below is a command that failed to run. Then after making sure we had an OS restore point saved, we issued the /resetRepository command. After that, the VS 2017 Pro installer was able to execute without error.

EDIT: Adding the exact steps and code sample below:

Step 1: Create a Windows system restore point.

Step 2: From the command prompt with administrative rights or elevated privileges, execute the following command: net stop winmgmt

Step 3: Open a Windows Explorer and locate the path to C:\windows\system32\WBEM\ folder and rename the Repository folder to something else like RepositoryOLD (right click and choose 'Rename Folder').

Step 4: restart the computer

Step 5: From the command prompt with administrative rights or elevated privileges, execute the following command: net stop winmgmt

C:\>net stop winmgmt
The Windows Management Instrumentation service is stopping.
The Windows Management Instrumentation service could not be stopped.    

Step 6: From the command prompt with administrative rights or elevated privileges, execute the following command: winmgmt /resetRepository

C:\>winmgmt /resetRepository
WMI repository has been reset

Step 7: restart the computer.

Hope this helps anyone with a similar Visual Studio 2017 installer issue.

Copy vs_community.exe to a USB and run. It will work.

I had the same (or similar) problem. I couldn't update VS2017, either from within the program or by trying to run the installer. The web page at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/troubleshooting-installation-issues had instructions that resolved the problem. For me, deleting the 'Installer' directory and then retrying the installation resolved the problem.

Try deleting this folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\. Restart the install.

Note for others with installer problems for Visual Studio 2017/2019/vNext

Before messing with your system FIRST TRY CLOSING EVERY OTHER PROGRAM.

Sounds silly, i know! But I almost missed inhahe's answer mentioning that RivaTuner could cause problems. Closing that caused it to start working instantly.

TL;DR: Close all other programs like you always ignore in installation instructions :)

Try to stop MSI AfterBurner. Worked for me.

It's the same answer as in question visual studio 2017 install break : it not get start just in case you don't observe the other question.

I had the same Problem on two different Pc's (both win10) and the only thing that worked for me, was reinstalling Windows's and rerun the visual studio installer. I know, that's not a good, fast or easy solution, but it works.

I have been having this issue all day and MS support were not able to help. To solve my issue, I updated my video driver to the latest version (I was intentionally using an old driver as the new versions don't support my monitor resolution). The visual studio installer must use a GUI tech not supported by my older card and just fails before the installer GUI loads. The same issue happened with the older, offline installers for older versions such as VS2013.

I had the same problem also (with a Dell labtop) and SHClark's didn't work for me. Here is what I did:

I used the command line to create a local cache of the files you need to complete an offline install

[ctrl] [shift] [enter] for the cmd prompt to run as admin

1) typed

d:\vs_community.exe --layout h:\vs2017layout --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.NativeDesktop --includeRecommended --lang en-US

once it was done downloading to h:\vs2017layout,

2) opened h:\vs2017layout\vs_setup.exe finally got it to open after extracting but ran into this error:

The name of the file cannot be resolved by the system

so I created a link for the c:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Visual Studio folder using the following command at windows cmd promt:

mklink /D "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\VisualStudio" "g:\ProgramData\Microsoft\VisualStudio"

It worked after that. Not sure if the second error was related to the first. Hope this helps.

I had the same issue, the fix is: go to reigonal settings from control panel, then on the administrative tab select (or if selected reselect) current language for non-unicode programs. than try again.

I had the same problem. Here is my solution:

1. right click vs installer, extract with winrar.
2. go to extracted folder.
3. run: vs_setup_bootstrapper.exe

This worked for me :)

I had the same problem and the problem was my user name containing both space and a non ascii character (Olcay Ertaş). I have moved the installer to my root folder and it worked. This is probably the reason why @oğuzhan-türk's solution is also working.

If you have Win8 you needed to update your system to 8.1 ver. and restart your computer.

I had this problem. Turned out there was an old, failed installation on the drive. I had to go to Control Panel->Add/Remove Programs and remove Visual Studio Install Tool. After that the installer worked fine.

Faced the same problem with Visual Studio 2019, but I think version doesn't matter here. This thread helped me: https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/326811/vs-community-installer-not-running-working.html. The reason was in somehow corrupted .NET files.

Actions applied:

• deleted all apps with "Microsoft .NET" in name using https://support.microsoft.com/ru-ru/help/17588/windows-fix-problems-that-block-programs-being-installed-or-removed
• downloaded and installed latest version of .NET Framework Runtime (not .NET Core Runtime) from https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download, in my case it was version 4.8
• restarted PC

This helped me.

Nothing worked for me here however i was able to find out that there was an error with the main.js file that he couldn't find the temp folder. so i looked up the environment variables and indeed for my current user TEMP was not set resp. empty. i copied the default temp value(%SystemRoot%\TEMP) for all users to my current user TEMP variable and afterwards everything worked

I have lost a lot of time to solve it. By me, it was an error in machine.config, which I made 2 weeks ago. I have found it only because I have tried to uninstall the JetBrains too. And there was an error too , but with a log, where I could see it.

After search during days and didn't work...
I tried uninstall all .NET frameworks and it works!