Visual Studio

Where Visual Studio keeps its logs

Visual Studio logs to %APPDATA%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\<Version>\ActivityLog.xml on Windows. 1 other Windows log location is recorded below.

Paths are printed exactly as Visual Studio writes them. Environment variables like %LOCALAPPDATA% and $XDG_STATE_HOME are never expanded, so a path can be pasted straight into a shell. Where a path differs between installer types or shipping flavours, each one is racked as its own card below - why that happens.

Finding your way around Windows.

How to turn on debug logging for Visual Studio

1. Start Visual Studio with devenv /log. The activity log is only written when you do this.
2. To choose the file, run devenv /log "%USERPROFILE%\MyVSLog.xml".
3. Put /log last on the command line.

How to collect Visual Studio logs

1. Download Microsoft's collect.exe tool from aka.ms/vscollect.
2. Run it elevated, as the same user who ran the failed install. For another user, add -user:<name>.
3. Attach %TEMP%\vslogs.zip.
4. Or open Visual Studio Installer and choose Report a problem. Visual Studio 2022 and later attach the latest setup log.
5. To look by hand, the dd_bootstrapper_*, dd_client_*, dd_installer_* and dd_setup_* logs are in %TEMP%.