Recently, one of my virtual machines started behaving strangely. I had SSMS 17.1 installed on the machine and it was working fine. I don’t remember what I installed, but I started facing an SSMS error. As soon as I click on SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), it gives me below pop-up.
I cannot find one or more components. Please reinstall the application.
As mentioned in the message, I already tried reinstalling the SSMS but the error didn’t go away. I searched on the internet and found one solution which worked for me.
SOLUTION/WORKAROUND – SSMS Error
The steps which worked for me were to repair Visual studio shell. It seems SSMS is dependent on the visual studio shell. As I mentioned earlier, My SSMS version was 17.1 and looks like it is based on a visual studio 2015 shell.
- Open the control panel and go to “Program and Featured”
- Search for the shell, as shown in the below image.
- In my case, it was Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Shell (Isolated). If the same error happens with lower versions of SSMS like SQL Server 2014 then I think it might be some different shell.
- Choose “Change” and selected the option to “Repair”
- After the repair, I restarted the machine and then I was able to launch SSMS.
The repair worked for me. If it doesn’t work for you then you may want to uninstall and then install it again It is a free download from Microsoft site.
Have you found a solution other than above? Please share it with others via command.
Reference: Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)
