How do I REALLY reset the Visual Studio window layout?

Visual Studio Problem Overview

I had a plugin installed in Visual Studio 2008, and it created some extra dockable windows. I have uninstalled it, and I can't get rid of the windows it created - I close them, but they always come back. They're just empty windows now, since the plugin is no longer present, but nothing I've tried gets rid of them. I've tried:

Window -> Reset Window Layout
Deleting the .suo files in my project directories
Deleting the Visual Studio 9.0 folder in my Application Settings directory

Any ideas?

Visual Studio Solutions

Solution 1 - Visual Studio

Have you tried this? In Visual Studio go to Tools > Import and Export Settings > Reset all settings

Be sure you back up your settings before you do this. I made the mistake of trying this to fix an issue and didn't realize it would undo all my appearance settings and toolbars as well. Took a lot of time to get back to the way I like things.

Solution 2 - Visual Studio

Try devenv.exe /resetuserdata. I think it's more aggressive than the Tools > Import and Export options suggested.

Also check Tools > Add In Manager and make sure there aren't any orphans there.

Solution 3 - Visual Studio

How about running the following from command line,

Devenv.exe /ResetSettings

You could also save those settings in to a file, like so,

Devenv.exe /ResetSettings "C:\My Files\MySettings.vssettings"

The /ResetSettings switch, Restores Visual Studio default settings. Optionally resets the settings to the specified .vssettings file.

MSDN link

Solution 4 - Visual Studio

I had similar problem except that it happened without installing any plugin. I begin to get this dialog about source control every time I open the project + tons of windows popping up and floating which I had to close one by one.

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Windows -> Rest Windows Layout, fixed it for me without any problems. It does bring the default setting which I don't mind at all :)

Solution 5 - Visual Studio

If you have an old backup copy of CurrentSettings.vssettings, you can try restoring it.

I had a completely corrupted Visual Studio layout. When I tried to enter debug, I was told that VS had become unstable. When I restarted, my window layout would then be totally screwed. I tried restoring the VS current user settings in the registry from a backup, but that didn't help. However, restoring CurrentSettings.vssettings seems to have cured it.

There seems to be a bunch of binary stuff in there and I can imagine it gets irretrievably corrupted sometimes.

Solution 6 - Visual Studio

If you want to reset the window layout. Then

go to "WINDOW" -> "RESET WINDOW LAYOUT"

Solution 7 - Visual Studio

Note: if you have vs2010 and vs2008 and you want to reset the 2008, you will need to specify in command line the whole path. like this:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" /resetsettings

If you don't specify the path (like devenv.exe /resetsettings), it will reset the latest version of Visual studio installed on your computer.

Solution 8 - Visual Studio

> I close them, but they always come back

When you say "they always come back" do you mean "next time you restart Visual Studio" or "immediately"?

One quirk of Visual Studio (at least VS2005) is that settings aren't saved until you exit. That means that if VS crashes at all while you are using it, any layout changes you made will be lost. The way around this is to always gracefully exit when you have set up everything like you want it to be.

Not sure if this will help your particular situation though.

Solution 9 - Visual Studio

I tried most of the suggestions, and none of them worked. I didn't get a chance to try /resetuserdata. Finally I reinstalled the plugin and uninstalled it again, and the windows went away.

Solution 10 - Visual Studio

If you've ever backed up your settings (Tools -> Import and Export Settings), you can restore the settings file to get back to a prior state. This is the only thing that I've found to work.

Solution 11 - Visual Studio

If you want to reset your development environment of your visual studio, then you can use Import and Export setting wizard. see this for all steps:

http://www.authorcode.com/forums/topic/how-to-reset-development-environment-settings-of-your-visual-studio/

Solution 12 - Visual Studio

Window -> Reset Window Layout didn't exist for me. For anybody looking in 2022 or later, I finally found the answer! The crucial information, buried in a VSCode update release note, was right at the bottom of this section. Here it is if the link breaks in the future:

> If you'd like to reset all views back to the default layout, you can run Views: Reset View Locations from the Command Palette.

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	TimK	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Visual Studio	Bryan Roth	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Visual Studio	Aidan Ryan	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Visual Studio	Vin	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Visual Studio	Hammad Khan	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - Visual Studio	David Pritchard	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - Visual Studio	Bonny	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 7 - Visual Studio	yossharel	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 8 - Visual Studio	LeopardSkinPillBoxHat	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 9 - Visual Studio	TimK	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 10 - Visual Studio	Chris Conway	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 11 - Visual Studio	hscoder	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 12 - Visual Studio	Geoff Davids	View Answer on Stackoverflow