vscode: Scoop: does not start anymore (blank window) (related to symlinks of installations)

Edit with workaround: This was due to VS Code being launched via a path with a symlink in it. Launching the executable without a symlink in the path works fine. This should be fixed in more recent Insider builds. See discussion starting at https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/126533#issuecomment-863079344 for cause and resolution.


Does this issue occur when all extensions are disabled?: Yes

  • VS Code Version: nightly-20210612, and nightly-20210616. Currently on 1.58.0-insider 3e0c442a8ee9fdc037d627d70fe291f72af04cfd x64
  • OS Version: Windows 10 Pro Insider (21390)

Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Open VS Code
  2. Window appears, but seemingly stops loading forever. It only displays the placeholder monaco-parts-splash elements and no other controls. No resize handles, but I can grab the window by the title bar area and resize it with Aero Snap (either dragging or keyboard shortcuts). Window immediately responds to Alt-F4. Process is idle (0-0.2% CPU usage, ~18MB RAM). See screenshot:

image

A few things I’ve tried with no resolution:

  • Deleting %appdata%\Code - Insiders\Code Cache as suggested in https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/114459
  • I tried launching from the terminal with combinations of --open-devtools, --disable-features=CalculateNativeWinOcclusion, --disable-extensions, --disable-gpu, with no change.
  • Electron Chrome devtools do not show any messages in the console.
  • Tried opening a new path in case it was an issue with restoring another session.
  • Tried updating from previous build (2021-06-12) but still encounter the issue on current nightly (2021-06-16).

Some more context:

  • VS Code is installed via scoop install vscode-insiders
  • I’ve successfully run VS Code (2021-06-12) before on this OS build earlier this week.
  • I can run a fresh install of the official release version of Code (1.57.0) just fine, even if I copy over the settings and symlink the extension folder.
  • Logs from %appdata%\Code - Insiders\logs are very sparse. All launches today show only a main.log with these messages below:
[2021-06-16 14:17:57.744] [main] [info] window: using vscode-file:// protocol and V8 cache options: bypassHeatCheck
[2021-06-16 14:17:58.015] [main] [info] update#setState idle

Sometimes the next two lines are also included:

[2021-06-16 14:18:28.022] [main] [info] update#setState checking for updates
[2021-06-16 14:18:28.199] [main] [info] update#setState idle

Keywords for search:

  • blank window
  • empty window
  • blank status bar, blank menu bar

About this issue

  • Original URL
  • State: closed
  • Created 3 years ago
  • Reactions: 1
  • Comments: 44 (21 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

@lediur @bpasero Thank you for figguring this out! Very impressive analysis! I’m working on a fix.

It works in 1.58.0-insider 🎉

/verified

Nice debugging. Out of curiosity and to narrow things down I downloaded the Linux archive version and set up a similar symlink structure on WSL, and that launched fine, so seems like it’s Windows specific. I have very little knowledge of the internals of the editor startup process but thought this might help save a bit of time.