Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 Known Issues and Fixed Bugs

Article
10/09/2017

Summary

Microsoft released Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 on November 30, 2015. This article lists the fixed bugs and known issues for Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Update 1.

To see the full list of Visual Studio 2015 products and to select a product for download, check out Visual Studio Downloads.

Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 details

To discover what's new in Visual Studio 2015 Update 1, see the Visual Studio release notes.

Note The size of this update package is 737 KB.

Fixed bugs

This section describes some bugs that are fixed in the Visual Studio 2015 Update 1.

Visual Studio Online

Assume that you add Application Insights to a Windows-based application of yours that failed because of a permissions issue. In this situation, you receive a new error message. This error message was improved and now includes the subscription name. That message resembles the following:

Could not add Application Insights to project. Could not create Application Insights resource '<ResourceName>': The Application Insights Service did not accept the request to create specified resource (403). This may indicate that you do not have sufficient permissions to the subscription "<SubscriptionName>".

Diagnostic Tools

In the Diagnostics Hub output in the Output window, the Diagnostic Tools window displays a"The Diagnostic Tools failed unexpectedly" message that includes "A cluster resource failed" or "Unable to Start Standard Collector".
When you open the Diagnostic Tools window in Visual Studio 2015, the UI display is delayed.

Known issues

Installation

When you are installing Visual Studio 2015 Update 1, you may receive the following error message if the operating system has to take a pending restart:

Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.1 Developer Pack – Incorrect Function.

If the "Incorrect function" error occurs, you have to restart your computer.

Workaround:

To work around this issue, restart your computer before you install the Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 package again.

JS Lang and Diagnostic Tools

Assume that you're debugging a JavaScript Windows Store application in the DOM Explorer. When you click Select element, the application that you're debugging can't be displayed in the foreground

To work around this issue, follow these steps:
1. Press Alt + Tab until the application that you're debugging is selected.
2. Pause on the element that you want to select.
3. Click to select the element.
4. Press Alt + Tab to return to Visual Studio.
Assume that you run the Diagnostic Tools while the debugging process isn’t targeting one of the following settings:
- Windows Phone 8.1 applications that have the build configuration set to Release
- Windows Store applications that were NGen'ed (This happens automatically after one day.)
- C++ Universal Windows Projects that have the build configuration set to debug mode
In any of these situations, the CPU Usage and Memory Usage tools don't display function names for code in your application.

To work around this issue, use one of the following methods:
- For Windows Phone 8.1 applications, change the selection on the build configuration drop-down list on the standard toolbar from Release to Debug.
- For C++ Universal Windows-based applications, set the build configuration to Release. If you want to run in debug mode, you can instead change Configuration Properties -> Debugging -> Generate Debug Info in project settings from Optimize for faster linking (/DEBUG:FASTLINK) to Optimize for debugging (/DEBUG).
- For Windows Store applications, you can make a change to the application and recompile.

The .NET Framework 4.6.1

Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 doesn't include the .NET Framework 4.6.1 ClickOnce Bootstrapper package that can update the prerequisite components list in Visual Studio 2015.

To work around this issue, see How to create the .NET Framework 4.6.1 prerequisites entry in Microsoft Visual Studio 2015.

Testing tools

To enable debugging of a Visual C++ Managed Test Project, go to the Tools -> Options -> Debugging -> General pane, and then clear the Enable Just My Code option.

XAML Designer

When you try to insert a code example from the XAML Editor, you get an empty list instead of the code example that was added for the XAML language.

To work around this issue, follow these steps:
1. Copy "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\DesignTools\Snippets\SnippetsIndex.xml" to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\DesignTools\Snippets\XAML".
2. Create a new Snippets folder in "C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0DesignToolsSnippetsXAML1033".
3. Copy "C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0DesignToolsSnippetsXAML1033Tag.snippet" to "C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0DesignToolsSnippetsXAML1033Snippets".
Note For x86-based computers, replace "Program Files(x86)" with "Program Files" in these paths.
When a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) project contains a resource dictionary that references another file through a relative path, if the Source property does not have a leading slash, the application will crash on start from Visual Studio with or without the Debugger. Older versions of the Xceed WPF toolkit may cause this issue to occurc in Visual Studio 2015.

To work around this issue, use one of the following methods:
- Determine whether you're using the Xceed controls or the extended WPF toolkit. Updating to version 2.5 or a later version of the extended WPF Toolkit should fix the problem. Download the new versions of the WPF toolkit from here.
- Look for instances of the Source property in resource dictionaries and make sure that they have a leading slash.
- If neither of these options is possible, on the Tools -> Options -> Debugging -> General tab, disable the UI Debugging tools.

Compiler improvements and breaking changes

The C++ compiler and standard library are updated with improved support for C++11 and C++14 features. They also include preliminary support for certain features that are expected to be in the C++17 standard. The most important changes are quality improvements for consexpr and first partial expression SFINAE support.
These improvements to the C++ compiler and standard library may cause breaks in existing source code. For more information, see Breaking Changes in Update 1.

Additionally, more than 200 compiler bugs are fixed. These include many that were submitted by customers through Microsoft Connect.

Visual Studio IDE

If you have Azure subscriptions under Azure Active Directories of which you're not a member, these subscriptions won't be automatically discovered in Visual Studio. For example, if you're a co-administrator of a subscription, but not a member of the directory that is trusted by the subscription, this subscription won't appear automatically in the Visual Studio IDE.

To work around the issue, go to File -> Account Settings and then click Apply Filter for the user account that is associated with the Azure subscription that you want to find. In the Apply Filter dialog box, type the domain of the directory for that subscription and then enter your credentials. After the filter is applied, the subscription will be available in Visual Studio.

Visual Studio Graphics Analyzer

The Send Feedback button in the title bar of the Visual Studio Graphics Analyzer application doesn't send feedback back to Microsoft. To supply feedback about this application until this bug is addressed, use one of the following options:
- https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio
- https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/home?forum=vsga
- Use the Send Feedback button in Visual Studio, and make sure that you mention that the feedback is for the Graphics Analyzer.

Web platform and tools

To make sure that all the debug breakpoints are hit as expected, when you debug a Windows Workflow Project, go to Tools -> Options -> Debugging -> General, and then select the Suppress JIT optimization on module load (Managed only) option.
If you right-click a project and then add an Azure API App client, the client code and NuGet packages are added successfully. However, you receive a warning that resembles the following when you build the project. The issue is that the binding redirect was not added to the application's configuration file.

Consider app.config remapping of assembly "Newtonsoft.Json, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=30ad4fe6b2a6aeed" from Version "4.5.0.0" [Path] to Version "6.0.0.0" [Path] to solve conflict and get rid of warning. C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\14.0\bin\Microsoft.Common.CurrentVersion.targets(1819,5): warning MSB3276: Found conflicts between different versions of the same dependent assembly. Please set the "AutoGenerateBindingRedirects" property to true in the project file. For more information, see https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=294190.

To work around the issue, add binding redirects to your application's configuration file (App.config or Web.config) as follows:
```
<runtime>  
<assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">  
<dependentAssembly>  
<assemblyIdentity name="Newtonsoft.Json" publicKeyToken="30ad4fe6b2a6aeed" culture="neutral" />  
<bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-6.0.0.0" newVersion="6.0.0.0" />  
</dependentAssembly>  
<dependentAssembly>  
<assemblyIdentity name="System.Net.Http.Primitives" publicKeyToken="b03f5f7f11d50a3a" culture="neutral" />  
<bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-4.2.28.0" newVersion="4.2.28.0" />  
</dependentAssembly>  
</assemblyBinding>  
</runtime>  
```
You can't add Service Reference to any Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) service on projects that are created by using the Visual Studio 2015 default web application or MVC project templates. When this issue occurs, you receive the following error message:

Error: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.Owin.Security, Version=2.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

To work around this issue, go to Add Service Reference->Advanced, and then clear Reuse types in referenced assemblies. There is minimal effect when you turn off "Reuse types."
If you're using Visual Studio 2015 on a virtual machine, occasionally, when you create a new ASP.NET 5 Web Application project or open an existing one, you may see that the References in Solution Explorer aren't loaded at all. Therefore, you receive lots of errors when you build the project. This occurs because of a timing issue with loading references.

To work around this issue, restart Visual Studio and then reopen the project. References should load correctly.
If you use Host in the Cloud option when you create a new ASP.NET 5 application, when you publish the project to Azure, you have to select the Use Powershell script option on the Settings tab of the Publish dialog box for the publishing operation to work successfully.
When you add a package by using Bower in the bower.json file of an empty ASP.NET 5 application, the Dependencies node may report that the package isn't installed even though the package was successfully installed by using Bower.

To work around this issue, close and then reopen the solution. The Dependencies node will detect the new package.
If you have an existing ASP.NET 5 project that was created by using Visual Studio 2015 RC and that uses ASP.NET beta 4, and you open the project by using Visual Studio 2015 RTM, you may experience an issue in which the References node shows "References (Errors - see Error list)" and the error list shows the message "The process cannot access the file '...\project.lock.json' because it is being used by another process." This is an issue with the ASP.NET beta 4 runtime that is exposed by Visual Studio 2015 RTM tooling. This issue is fixed with ASP.NET beta5 (Visual Studio 2015 RTM).

To work around this issue when you continue to develop your project with ASP.NET beta 4, you can close and then reopen the solution. This should fix the issue with project.lock.json.
If you try to build and run an ASP.NET 5 Web Application project that was created by using Visual Studio 2015 RC (ASP.NET beta 4), you experience the following runtime error at the "app.UseBrowserLink()" line in Startup.cs :

Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.AspNet.Http.Abstractions, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

To work around this issue when you continue to develop your project with ASP.NET beta 4, you can comment out the "app.UseBrowserLink()" line in Startup.cs.
If you uninstall Visual Studio 2015 Update 1, Web Tooling will be disabled. It won't be possible to create or open web projects. Web project templates will be missing, and opening a web project will cause “(incompatible)” to be displayed. Files such as style sheets and JSON files will open in a generic text view.

To work around this issue, follow these steps on a computer that has Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 uninstalled:
1. Close Visual Studio.
2. Open Control Panel -> Uninstall a Program.
3. Select Visual Studio [SKU Name] 2015.
4. Right-click and select change.
5. In the Visual Studio installer, click Modify.
6. Expand Windows and Web Development.
7. Check Microsoft Web Developer Tools, and then click Update.
This update runs quickly compared with a full product repair. When the update is complete, web tooling will be restored to the pre-Update 1 version.

More information

How to download Microsoft support files

Updates for other products in the Visual Studio family can be found on the Microsoft download site for Visual Studio website.

Restart requirement

You may have to restart your computer after you install this package.

Software requirement

On Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2, you have to install update 2919355 (also available through Windows Update) before you install Visual Studio 2015 RTM. This is because the .NET Framework 4.6 installer can't be installed without update 2919355.

Supported architectures

32-bit (x86)
64-bit (x64) (WOW)

Third-party applications

Visual Studio 2015 installation lets you install third-party applications. For information about which third-party applications are required when you install Cross Platform Mobile Development tools from Visual Studio 2015 , check out Knowledge Base Article 3060693.
Visual Studio 2015 removal does not uninstall third-party applications. For information about how to uninstall third-party applications that were installed together with Visual Studio 2015, check out Knowledge Base Article 3060695.

Applies to

Visual Studio Professional 2015
Visual Studio Enterprise 2015
Visual Studio Community 2015
Visual Studio Express 2015 for Web
Visual Studio Express 2015 for Desktop
Visual Studio Express 2015 for Windows 10

Warning

The third-party products that this article discusses are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, about the performance or reliability of these products.