Intellisense not working VS2008

Question

 To all,

On one of our projects, intellisense stopped working.

The error message we get is:


The Visual Studio language support for VB has not been installed. Code-editing IntelliSense will not be available. Mark up.. may not work.

We have repaired, reinstalled, applied service pack 1.

Is there a registry setting I could tweak?

This is a Visual Studio 2008, SP1 team system.

Thanks beforehand.

---

Otto Astorga

Answer 1

Hi,
did you installed a Beta version of VS 2008 before of the RTM one? I found similar errors searching the Internet, related to other .NET programming languages.

I would suggest you these steps:

1. Uninstall again VS 2008 SP 1
2. Perform a complete registry clean up using a specific tool like this: http://www.eusing.com/free_registry_cleaner/registry_cleaner.htm
3. Reinstall VS 2008 SP 1

Hope this helps

---

Alessandro Del Sole - Microsoft MVP http://community.visual-basic.it/Alessandro

Answer 2

Thank you Alessandro for your good suggestions.
 
Hi astoroa,

Welcome to MSDN forums!

Please try Alessandro's suggestions and the following general guidelines to fix the IDE issues.

1. Tools menu -> Import and Export Settings -> Reset all settings

2. Create a new project, do you have the issue?
    Sometimes corrupted project settings can cause problems.

3. Disable Add-ns (e.g. “Tools” | “Add-in Manager”) and run “devenv.exe /safemode”.
   This can eliminate the possibility that third party Add-ins are causing problems.

4. Apply the latest service packs of Visual Studio and .NET Framework.

5. If you reboot the operating system to safe mode, does this IDE issue occur?
This can help to isolate whether any other applications are interfering with Visual Studio. Note that some features (like IIS) are not available under safe mode. Please check whether this can apply or not. In addition to safe mode, we can also suggest "clean boot”: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353.

 
6. Try VB Express Edition or C# Express Edition.
Visual Studio full Edition and Express Edition can co-exist.
Download Visual Studio 2008 Express Editions
              http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/

Download Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions
             http://www.microsoft.com/express/2005/

Best regards,
Martin Xie

Answer 3

Just a quick addition to this for 2005 users. I randomly experienced the same issue using VS 2005 Professional this morning.
Disabling add-ons and safe mode didn't work, but just re-running the SP1 installer fixed it (didn't even bother uninstalling it first, but it is probably safer to).
It may be worth trying this for half an hour, before doing a full repair/reinstall for 2 hours...

Phil