SQL Server - SSMS exiting immediately after showing the splash screen.
Last year, I installed SQL Server Management Studio 18.0 on a server tested the connection to the SQL Instance and everything looked OK.
SSMS was exiting immediately after showing the splash screen.
But months later, I tried again and SSMS was not starting.
To troubleshoot this, let's cd to the PATH where SSMS was installed in:
cd c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 18\Common7\IDE\
and then executed ssms.exe -log PATH, to try to gather more information about the error.
ssms.exe -log c:\SSMSlog.txt
!SSMS was again exiting immediately after showing the splash screen.
and then I opened the log file with Notepad.
notepad c:\SSMSlog.txt
and I didn't find any references to the error below like other blogs.
<entry>
<record>32</record>
<time>2020/02/03 16:14:50.937</time>
<type>Error</type>
<source>VisualStudio</source>
<description>
Could not load file or assembly Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop.8.0,
...
I found this:
<entry>
<record>969</record>
<time>2020/02/04 09:50:15.570</time>
<type>Error</type>
<source>Microsoft.VisualStudio.ComponentModelHost.VsShellComponentModelHost</source>
<description>Still unable to load MEF component DLL: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.ProjectSystem, Version=15.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.</description>
<path>c:\program files (x86)\microsoft sql server management studio 18\common7\ide\commonextensions\microsoft\typescript\Microsoft.VisualStudio.LanguageServices.TypeScript.dll</path>
</entry>
However, the file Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop.8.0 seems to be the problem anyway.
Workaround.
So this is a library problem and the first step is to make a copy of the current file as later we are going to overwrite it with another version of it.
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 18\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies\
![](https://blog.dbplatz.com/content/images/2021/02/image-2.png)
So just to be on the safe side, I copied and pasted the file to create a copy of it using Ctrl C & Ctrl V
![](https://blog.dbplatz.com/content/images/2021/02/image-3.png)
Copy the one from here
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 18\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\Intertop
![](https://blog.dbplatz.com/content/images/2021/02/image-4.png)
And paste it here.
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 18\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\Intertop
![](https://blog.dbplatz.com/content/images/2021/02/image-5.png)
Once we overwrite the file we can open again SSMS 18.0
![](https://blog.dbplatz.com/content/images/2021/02/image-6.png)
This bug was already fixed on the 18.1 version of SSMS. More info below.
![](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/media/logos/logo-ms-social.png)
Bug fixes in 18.1
![](https://blog.dbplatz.com/content/images/2021/02/image-1.png)
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