Troubleshooting the 'Unexpected exception: Cannot get image...' error message

Applies to: VisualSVN 6.0 and later

Symptoms

You may see the following error message when starting Visual Studio 2017 and 2019:

VisualSVN initialization failed. For more details see Output window.

Output window contains the following error:

VisualSVN initialization has failed. All VisualSVN features are disabled. More error details are available in: C:\Users\MyUser\AppData\Local\Temp\VisualSVN\VisualSVN-20хх-хх-хх-хх-хх-хххх.log

Log file referenced in the error message contains an exception similar to:

Unexpected exception: Cannot get image '742477e2-c767-429f-b906-6c553b7cd1d1:12, 9x16' from the image service.

Cause

The common cause of this error is changing the path to the Windows local Application Data folder (represented by the %LOCALAPPDATA% environment variable). For example, if you rename your Windows user profile.

Resolution

Make sure that your Visual Studio instance is up to date and update it if possible because this problem can be fixed in the most recent version of Visual Studio. Read Microsoft Docs | Update Visual Studio for more information and instructions.

If you already have up to date version of Visual Studio, you can repair your Visual Studio instance via the Visual Studio Installer in order to resolve the issue. Read Microsoft Docs | Repair Visual Studio for more information.

Follow these steps to repair Visual Studio:

  1. Start Visual Studio Installer.
  2. Click the Details icon in front of your Visual Studio 2017/2019 installation, and then click Repair.

Wait for the repair to complete and start Visual Studio. The error should not occur anymore, and VisualSVN will initialize without issues.

See also

KB49: Where are VisualSVN logs stored

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