Try these before you uninstall anything
Visual Studio 2026 is a big install, and putting it back is rarely the shortest route to a working IDE. Start at the top of this table and work down.
| What’s wrong | Try this first | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Crashes, missing components, files that will not load | Repair | Resets your local settings and extensions; synced settings return when you sign in |
| It broke immediately after an update | Roll back to the previous version | The version only — your projects and settings are untouched |
| The Installer itself will not open or update | Reset the Installer | Nothing inside Visual Studio |
| Wrong workloads, or a component you no longer need | Modify | Adds or removes components only |
| Moving Visual Studio to a different drive | Uninstall and reinstall | Everything — and it is the only supported method |
Repair, and the part Microsoft does not put in bold
Repair reacquires installation files that were corrupted or never written correctly to disk, and it clears up a good proportion of failed updates. Open the Visual Studio Installer, find your installed instance, select More and then Repair. The option only appears against installed instances, not the ones on the Available tab.
What the documentation mentions rather more quietly is that Repair also resets your environment: per-user extensions, user settings and profiles go. If you are signed in, synchronised settings such as your theme, colours and key bindings come back on their own; anything local does not. Repair is cheap, but it is not free — export your settings first, exactly as you would before a reinstall.
Roll back a bad update
If Visual Studio was fine on Friday and broken on Monday, the update is the suspect and there is no reason to remove the whole product. Visual Studio 2022 and later can roll back to the previously installed version from an administrator command prompt:
Replace the path with your own installation directory. This is the single most under-used option in the whole installer, largely because it lives in a troubleshooting article rather than in the interface.
Reset the Visual Studio Installer
A surprising number of “I need to reinstall” problems are really the Installer failing, not Visual Studio. If updates will not apply or the Installer will not start, close it, delete its folder, and run the bootstrapper again:
- Close the Visual Studio Installer.
- Delete
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer. - Run
VisualStudioSetup.exe— the bootstrapper you originally downloaded from Microsoft.
Visual Studio itself is untouched by this. You are replacing the tool that manages it.
How to uninstall Visual Studio 2026
If you have worked down the list and a reinstall really is the answer, there are three routes, and they are not interchangeable.
The standard uninstall
This removes Visual Studio and leaves the Installer in place, which is what you want if you intend to put it back.
- Search the Windows Start menu for installer and open the Visual Studio Installer, or run
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\setup.exedirectly. It may need to update itself before it will do anything else. - Find the edition you have installed, select More, then Uninstall.
- Select OK to confirm.
To reinstall afterwards, open the Installer again, go to the Available tab, choose your edition and select Install.
Removing everything, including the Installer
If Visual Studio is going for good, the Installer is a separate program and has to be removed separately — which is why so many people find it still sitting in their Start menu afterwards. In Windows, open Add or remove programs, find Visual Studio, and uninstall it from the ellipsis menu. Then find Microsoft Visual Studio Installer in the same list and uninstall that too.
When the uninstall itself fails: InstallCleanup.exe
If Visual Studio will neither repair nor uninstall, Microsoft ships a tool that removes installation files and product information for every installed instance of a given version. It is deliberately not exposed in the interface.
“Use the InstallCleanup tool only as a last resort if repair or uninstallation fails. This tool might uninstall features from other Visual Studio installations or other products, which you then might need to repair or reinstall.”
Close the Visual Studio Installer, open a command prompt as administrator, and run the tool with the flag that matches what you are actually doing:
| Flag | What it removes | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
-i |
The main installation directory and product information, and nothing else. Add a version to limit it — -i 18 covers the Visual Studio 2026 line, -i 17 covers Visual Studio 2022. |
You are reinstalling the same version |
-f |
All of the above, plus most other features installed outside the installation directory — some of which may be shared with other Visual Studio installations or other products. | You are removing Visual Studio and not putting it back |
The distinction matters more than the tool does. Running -f when you meant to reinstall is how people end up repairing three unrelated products afterwards. If in doubt, use -i with the version number.
What uninstalling leaves behind
A standard uninstall is not a scorched-earth removal, and that is by design. Two things in particular tend to survive it.
The first is the package cache — a local copy of the packages Visual Studio installed, kept so the product can be repaired or modified without an internet connection. It is not junk, and deleting it simply means those files get downloaded again the next time they are needed. You can install with --nocache to skip it, move it to a roomier drive with the CachePath registry policy, or refill it before you go offline:
The second is everything installed outside the Visual Studio directory: SDKs, build tools and redistributables that other software on the machine may also be relying on. That is precisely the category Microsoft gates behind the -f flag and a warning, and it is the reason a “clean” reinstall often is not as clean as people expect. It is also why a reinstall frequently fails to fix a problem that was never in Visual Studio to begin with.
How to reinstall Visual Studio 2026 without losing your afternoon
Half of a good reinstall happens before you uninstall anything. Work through this in order.
- Export your settings. Tools → Import and Export Settings, then export to a
.vssettingsfile somewhere that is not the drive you are about to rearrange. Signed-in users get theme, fonts, colours, key bindings, window layouts and text editor options back automatically, but settings do not roam between different Visual Studio versions or side-by-side installations, so the export is worth two minutes of anyone’s time. - Write down your workloads. Open the Installer, hit Modify and note which workloads and individual components are ticked. Nothing reconstructs this for you, and guessing at it afterwards is the part that actually eats the afternoon.
- Find your product key. Dig out the email or the licence record now, while Visual Studio is still running and you can check it under File → Account Settings.
- Uninstall, using whichever of the three routes above fits.
- Reinstall from the Installer’s Available tab, or by running the bootstrapper. On a slow connection, or across several machines, a local offline layout is a much faster source than downloading everything again.
- Re-enter your key at File → Account Settings → License with a Product Key.
- Import your settings back from the same Tools menu, and reinstall any extensions you were using.
Does reinstalling cost you your licence?
No. A Visual Studio product key is a licence you own, not a one-shot install token, and reinstalling on the same machine does not consume it. What can happen is that a freshly reinstalled Visual Studio comes up unlicensed — Professional and Enterprise start a 30-day trial, extendable once to 90 days if you sign in — and the fix is simply to put the key back in under File → Account Settings. Keep the email. That is the whole trick, and it is the reason step three above exists.
A genuine licence key delivered by email, with UK-based help getting it activated if the reinstall does not go to plan. No subscription, no annual renewal.
The one case where reinstalling is the only option
Everything above treats a reinstall as a remedy of last resort. There is one situation where it is not a remedy at all — it is the documented procedure, and there is no alternative to it: moving Visual Studio to a different drive.
“You can select a different location only when you first install Visual Studio. If you’ve already installed it and want to change the location, you must uninstall Visual Studio and then reinstall it.”
That applies to both the Visual Studio IDE location and the download cache. There is no move operation, no repoint, no supported registry edit. If your system drive is filling up and Visual Studio is the reason, this is the job.
Two things to know before you start, because you only get one attempt at them. The shared components, tools and SDKs path is greyed out on any machine that has had Visual Studio installed before, so it stays where it first landed. And some tools and SDKs install to the system drive regardless of what you choose, so the move will free up less space than the total install size suggests. Decide all three paths at the point of reinstalling, not afterwards — changing your mind means doing this again. Our guide to Visual Studio 2026 system requirements covers how much room to plan for.
Frequently asked questions
Have it to hand. A reinstalled Visual Studio may come back unlicensed and start a trial, and you re-enter the key under File → Account Settings → License with a Product Key. The licence itself is not consumed by reinstalling, so the same key works again on the same machine.
No. Uninstalling removes the IDE and its components, not your source folders, repositories or solution files. Back them up anyway before any major change — but the uninstaller does not go near them.
Repair replaces corrupted or missing installation files and resets your local settings and extensions, keeping the installation itself in place. A reinstall removes the product entirely and puts it back. Repair takes minutes; a reinstall takes as long as the download does.
Yes. Visual Studio supports side-by-side installations of different versions, each managed as its own instance in the Installer and each with its own settings. There is more on what changed between the two in our Visual Studio 2022 vs 2026 comparison.
Try deleting the Installer folder and running the bootstrapper again first, which repairs the Installer without touching Visual Studio. If that fails, InstallCleanup.exe removes the installation files and product information as a last resort — use the -i flag if you plan to reinstall.
Not necessarily. Components installed outside the Visual Studio directory can remain, because they may be shared with other Visual Studio installations or other products on the machine. That is exactly what Microsoft’s InstallCleanup -f flag exists to clear, and why it carries a warning.
Uninstall it and reinstall it, choosing the new location during setup. Microsoft states that the install location can only be set at first install, so there is no supported way to move an existing installation. Note that the shared components path cannot be changed once Visual Studio has been installed on that machine.
Yes. Visual Studio 2026 was released on 11 November 2025 under the Modern Lifecycle Policy, with retirement currently listed as 9 November 2027. Our guide to Visual Studio end of life dates covers where the older versions stand.
If your reinstall is really a fresh start
Some people arrive at a reinstall because the trial ran out, or because the machine they are rebuilding was never properly licensed in the first place. Microsoft’s own UK list price for a standalone Visual Studio Professional 2026 licence is £573.00 at the time of writing. A genuine perpetual key from us is considerably less, delivered by email, and comes with someone in the UK to talk to if activation misbehaves.
Gary Walsh is the Head of Tech Support at Software Supplies, with more than 20 years in the IT industry. Fully Microsoft-certified and experienced across the full business software stack — from Windows and Office to cloud infrastructure and device management — Gary delivers practical, no-nonsense advice that helps users and businesses get the most from their technology.
