I was using my VS fine for a while then all of a sudden I get this weird dialog box when compiling and it did not compile as normal. I did not even fully read the dialog box and just closed out my program to restart it again because I thought it was some glitch.

After I closed everything trying to reload VS it flashes the VS screen really quickly and then disappears and does not work.

Then I go to update VS in "ADD or Remove Programs" with the same problem. Then I uninstall and not even the install VisualStudioSetup.exe will run. It just flashes the install bar really quickly and then disappears.

I then go to my windows to a restore point where everything worked before and still I cannot run VisualStudioSetup.exe. It just flashes quick.

Then somehow I see VS in "ADD or Remove Programs" and I update install it from there. It runs VS title flash and then disappears and nothing.

Any ideas?

I also ran it as admin and disabled my anti-virus with the same results.

When you run VS Installer (vs_installer.exe) what happens - what does it show? If it shows your VS installation, try a repair (More/repair).

When I run VisualStudioSetup.exe it just pops up the installation bar as if it is installing and then asks for permission. I hit yes then it flashes and it is all gone and disappeared and nothing happens anymore. It just self terminates and it does not show up on Task Manager.

Yes - but what about vs_installer.exe which was what I asked? This isn't VisualStudioSetup.exe. It's a different program.

Maybe a problem with your certificate. Take a look at these explanations.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58299510/how-to-fix-vs-installershell-exe-has-an-invalid-certificate
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49351848/error-updating-visual-studio-2017-15-6-2/49480199#49480199

So erase everything according to your path and reinstall VS. I guess that you can restart from scratch ++

I just uninstalled VS and installed it again and it is the same. The VS splash screen comes up and disappears and then nothing, the program closes.

I then uninstalled it and then I run vs_installer.exe it is the same when I go to "ADD or Remove Programs" and it gives me options to now install Enterprise/Professional/Community just like before.

I will look at link thanks.

After you have installed VS, then run vs_installer.exe. What does it show?

PS What Windows version are you using? I'm assuming you're installing the latest version of VS?

seeplus it was too late for me to check. After reading the links above I used InstallCleanup.exe to cleanup and I am finally able to run the install link normally now as I should be able to. I was not able to run this before.

It is updating now and it will take a while and I hope this fixes it.

Only problem that I still see is "Visual Studio Community 2019" is still in my installed app section even after running InstallCleanup.exe and it won't go away. Even when I tried to physically remove the folders before it would not go away. I am surprised the cleanup did not clean that up too.

We will see in a few min if it at least runs the fresh copy correctly.

Using Win 10 & latest version of VS.

And I also had to update Win 10 before doing all of the above according to the link.

This seems to work now, I can't believe how long it took me to finally fix it.

Teamwork. I am happy for you ++

If you are still using VS 2019 consider upgrading to VS 2022. If your Win10 is 64-bit.

For a long time I had 2019 & 2022 installed together, until a couple of months ago 2019 started acting buggy. Different than what you describe, SubZeroWins, but very annoying. I decided to uninstall 2019 and haven't looked back.

FYI, when running the VS installer any previous VS versions you had installed and removed, 2017 or 2019, is listed as available for installation. I have VS 2022 installed on two separate Win 10 x64 machines. One had previous VS installs, 2015/2017/2019 and so I see 2017 and 2019 as available. The other machine never had a previous VS version installed so any available installation is for 2022 Enterprise and 2022 Professional. No 2017/2019 option from within the installer.

I have found 2022 to be more stable overall than 2019, and doesn't have as large a HD footprint as 2019 had.

2022 is likely to be updated when the C++23 standard is finally officially released, 2019 might not be.

For C++20 2022 is more stable than 2019, though both are 100% standard compliant. 2019 is 'twitchy.'

VS Intellisense is still having 'on again/off again' C++20 issues, no matter which VS version. The code compiles without a problem, intellisense reports "errors."