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visual-studioinstallationinstancevisual-studio-installer

Uninstall all Visual Studio versions manually after _Instances folder was deleted

Context: I had an unrelated issue with my Visual Studio installation and saw in the "Visual Studio Installer" that it has a "Download cache" (for me C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Packages) under "Installation locations". I went on to delete the contents of this folder (don't do that!).

Now unfortunately the "_Instances" folder inside of it is gone as well. This apparently is the location where the "Visual Studio Installer" stores all information about the installed Visual Studio versions.

Now I have 3 versions of Visual Studio installed (2017, 2019, 2022 - all in Professional version), that I can't modify or uninstall anymore because the Installer doesn't know about them.

Ideally, I just want to uninstall them fully and start again with new fresh installations, but I don't know how to uninstall them manually.

Things that already didn't work for me:

  • Control Panel -> Uninstall, this just opens the "Visual Studio Installer" and again it has no information anymore
  • InstallCleanup.exe, seems to do something but the Visual Studio installations are still there after running
Solution

  • To remove Visual Studio manually, please delete following folders:

    C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio

    C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio

    %programdata%\Microsoft\visualstudio\packages

    Back up and then delete following Registry keys(press Win + R, run regedit):

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Setup

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Setup

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Setup

    After that download a new setup file, put it into a new empty folder and run it to reinstall VS.