The specified account already exists - .NET Core RC2 tooling Preview 1

visual-studio-2015 .net-core-rc2
Vahid Amiri picture Vahid Amiri · Jul 1, 2016 · Viewed 8.2k times · Source

Recently and with the release of Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 and .NET Core RTM, I decided to uninstall my previous installation of Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 and have a fresh installation of Update 3. So I uninstalled Visual Studio completely and restarted my PC.

Now I decided to uninstall the Microsoft .NET Core 1.0 RC2 VS 2015 Tooling Preview 1 from Control Panel. It gives me the following error several times and then fails:

The specified account already exists.

and here is the error code:

0x80070643 - Fatal error during installation

In the log file, these lines are repeated several times:

[1760:1CA0][2016-07-01T02:30:32]i301: Applying execute package: WebToolsExtensionsVS14, action: Uninstall, path: (null), arguments: ' ARPSYSTEMCOMPONENT="1" MSIFASTINSTALL="7" SKIP_SETUP="1"'
[1760:1CA0][2016-07-01T02:30:39]e000: Error 0x80070643: Failed to uninstall MSI package.
[1760:1CA0][2016-07-01T02:30:39]e000: Error 0x80070643: Failed to execute MSI package.
[247C:2490][2016-07-01T02:30:39]e000: Error 0x80070643: Failed to configure per-machine MSI package.
[247C:2490][2016-07-01T02:30:39]w348: Application requested retry of package: WebToolsExtensionsVS14, encountered error: 0x80070643. Retrying...

Answer

1283822 picture 1283822 · Mar 14, 2017

This is a bug in the .NET Core Tools for VS2015 installer.

I got this error when I tried to uninstall all VS2015 related tools on Windows 10 (not reinstallation, because I want VS2017 instead). I uninstalled VS2015 before removing .NET Core Tools. While trying to remove .NET Core Tools, it tried to call WebToolsExtensionsVS14 for repair; WebToolsExtensionsVS14 failed because VS2015 no longer existed.

I found the MSI package for WebToolsExtensionsV14 in the package cache:

C:\ProgramData\Package Cache\{BFC344B0-DCDE-36EB-AB05-CB194F2BE946}v14.1.21111.0\packages\WebToolsExtensionsVS14_69.msi

and right-click uninstalled it. Then the .NET Core Tools uninstaller worked.

My recommendation is to remove core tools before removing VS itself.

I found some related issue here, after I figured it out. https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/ae380a17-60e0-43a4-a481-6e58915e7897/net-core-errors-on-installation-webtoolsextensionsvs14-encountered-error-0x80070643?forum=vssetup

Related questions

How to download Visual Studio Community Edition 2015 (not 2017)

I have a Resharper 9x license and it is only compatible up to MS VS Community 2015 edition. I tried to download the 2015 version from Microsoft but their website stubbornly wants me to have 2017, only. Can someone please provide me a …

Read More
How do I enable NuGet Package Restore in Visual Studio?

There's a similar post on stack but it doesn't help with my issue possibly because I am using Visual Studio 2015. How do I get the "Enable NuGet Package Restore" option to appear in VS2015? I chose File > New Project …

Read More
Force uninstall of Visual Studio

While uninstalling Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate 2015 Preview, it throws an error quoting "Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate 2015 Preview has stopped working" Message Content Include: A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you …

Read More