VS2019 - Install fails with "A product matching the following parameters cannot be found"

Article
2019-10-17

Question

_{Thursday, October 17, 2019 12:28 PM}

Hello,

I can't install VS2019 (nor VS2017) on my Dev machine. I always get the "A product matching the following parameters cannot be found" message while launching the installer. In the log file, I can read the following error:

Error : Failed to get product summaries. [installerId: SetupEngine, error: Illegal characters in path. at System.ArgumentException: Illegal characters in path.

I already contacted the Live chat and tried many fixes:

. InstallCleanup.exe -full

. Disabled FW and AV
. Removed Mirosoft VS folders in Program Files x86, AppData and user AppData
. Uninstalled NewtonSoft from the GAC and removed from the registry
. Restart the whole process after having installed all Windows Update. I'm now with Windows 10 build 1809 (it was 1803 yesterday)
. Launched the vs_enterprise.exe from a Command Prompt with System Context (psexec)

Nothing worked. Any idea?

Thanks.

All replies (12)

_{Friday, October 18, 2019 8:35 AM | 1 vote}

Hi Stricnis,

According to your description, Visual studio installer seems to be corrupt, You can refer to the steps below

(1)please manually delete the "%programfiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer” folder,

(2) Re-download and install the newly vs_enterprise.exe (or vs_professional.exe or vs_community.exe…) from here

If it still doesn't work, I need your help to collect the installation log. Please download and run this collect.exe tool, go to %temp% folder and find the vslogs.zip file, upload it to https://onedrive.live.com/ and share the link in here.

Hope all above could help you and any feedback would be great expected.

Best Regards,

Tianyu

MSDN Community Support
Please remember to click "Mark as Answer" the responses that resolved your issue, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if not. This can be beneficial to other community members reading this thread. If you have any compliments or complaints to MSDN Support, feel free to contact [email protected].

_{Friday, October 18, 2019 9:04 AM}

Hi Tyanyu,

here is the link: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjnahUdtvUqybj3i4EgKZMa2eG8?e=6pwDHV

It seems I can't use a link as my account isn't verified. Don't know how to do that.

Thanks!

_{Monday, October 21, 2019 6:49 AM}

Hi Stricnis,

Welcome to the MSDN forum.

Thank you for your feedback and sorry for the late reply. According to your uploaded logs, it shows that the path has illegal characters.

Please have a try with following:

You could delete following folder: C:\Users\profile>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Packages\Channels
When installing VS, you could check if the path is correct. It is not allowed to contain Chinese and other illegal characters.
Please look in the Installer folder C:\Windows\Installer and delete these .tmp files if they are present.

In addition, if you want to verify the account, please refer to the link.

Best Regards,

Tianyu

_{Monday, October 21, 2019 7:56 AM}

Hi Tyanyu,

I already removed this folder tens of times while using the chat (full list of operations made in first post). After having made the whole cleanup, the C:\Users\profile>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\ folder is not created again when I launch the installer so there's no Packages folder inside.

There is a Packages folder in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\VisualStudio but it contains only the _bootstrapper folder, no _Channels here either.

The 3rd VS folder (C:\ProgramData\Microsoft Visual Studio) contains 2 files: MachineStorage.dat and MachineStorage.dat.bak.

Finally, I found no _Channels folder in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer folder.

Best regards,

Yann.

_{Tuesday, October 22, 2019 8:14 AM}

Tyanyu,

is there a way to install VS2019 without using the installer? I already tried the command line but I get the same error. I can't develop for one week now and it's very frustrating.

Best regards.

_{Tuesday, October 22, 2019 12:49 PM}

And to complete the information, my profile is very simple with no special character so there should not be any issue with C:\Users\profile>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Packages\Channels path (except this path doesn't exist).

_{Wednesday, October 23, 2019 1:48 AM}

Hi Stricnis,

Welcome to the MSDN forum.

Thanks for your patience and sorry for the late reply. For online or offline installation, we must install VS2019 by using installer. Please have a try with the following tools to fix the issue.

#1. Windows Update Troubleshooter

Download the Windows Update Troubleshooter, and then select Open or Save in the pop-up window.

It is noted that you might have a pop-up blocker on instead of pop-up window. If you select Save, you need to the folder where the troubleshooter is downloaded to after the download is complete, and then double-click the WindowsUpdate.diagcab file to run the troubleshooter.

Then, select Next and follow the steps in the wizard to find and fix problems with Windows Update.

#2. If the tool that mentioned above does not work, you could try to use DISM tool to fix the issue.

Hope all above could help you and any feedback would be great expected.

Best Regards,

Tianyu

_{Wednesday, October 23, 2019 8:30 AM}

Thanks for the tips but this didn't change anything. Both options run fine without finding any issue.

I've tried to launch the install from another account (a local administrator account) without more success. So, I think it eliminates my profile from the suspects.

Do you think I should remove all older versions of Visual Studio? (VS 2015 and prior)

We seriously start to envisage to re-image my machine. Would it be possible to see which path contains these illegal characters in the logs?

I faced conflicting issues recently between AzureRM and Az powershell modules, could this be related? I finally uninstall all Az modules as I couldn't make my app work with these modules but it doesn't work anymore with AzureRM modules either: https://github.com/Azure/azure-powershell/issues/9728

Best regards,

Yann.

_{Thursday, October 24, 2019 8:29 AM}

Hi Yann,

Thanks for your feedback. I am sorry to hear that your issue has not been solved.

For VS 2015 and VS 2019, they can install on the same computer. Please have a look at the system driver, make sure it is up-to-date, then perform a clean boot and re-download the VS installer to install VS 2019 again.

If it still doesn’t work, I am afraid you need to consider re-install your operating system.

We are willing to help you further and any feedback would be great expected.

Best Regards,

Tianyu

_{Tuesday, October 29, 2019 10:25 AM}

Hi Tianyu,

nothing worked for me. Had to reinstall Windows 10.

Best regards,

Yann.

_{Wednesday, October 30, 2019 7:48 AM}

Hi Yann,

Really sorry for this inconvenient.

If your issue still persists after reinstalling Windows 10, feel free to contact us. We will continue to try our best to help you.

BTW, if you have any other questions about Visual Studio Setup and Installation, please feel free to let us know.

I hope reinstall Windows 10 could fix your issue, and wish you a nice day.

Best Regards,

Tianyu

_{Thursday, February 27, 2020 6:36 AM}

Hello,

I do have the same problem. I did a clean installation of Win 10 Enterprise 2019 LTSB x64, and an offline installation of VS 2019 (v.16.4.5) after downloading the absolutely full layout. The first installation works well; I copied the layout folder to c:\temp\. After the installation I deleted the folder again because I don't want 35GB to lay there for nothing.

After VS 2019 I tried to install the ReSharper software; it failed for whatever reason, investigation is ongoing. But also I am not able to edit the VS 2019 installation anymore, because the installer says that there are no VS 2019 editions installed. Even if I copy the layout folder to the same place and try the installer therein, the results are the same.

I already thought I did something wrong when I installed VS 2019 (v.16.4.4) on my laptop (Win 7 Pro SP1 x64) and couldn't update / edit / uninstall it afterwards, but this rather looks like some basic failure in the VS 2019 installer. My laptop has internet.

I can try the installation on Win 10 again, since I created an image of the entire system partition prior to installtion VS, and I will do so, but I doubt that it will change things.

Regards
Tobias Knauss

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VS2019 - Install fails with "A product matching the following parameters cannot be found"

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