'Change Source Control' Menu Disappears in Visual Studio

A reader recently emailed me the following issue/question:

"I recently installed the VS 2005 December CTP on a machine that also has VS 2003 installed. I uninstalled the CTP today and now my VS2003 'change source control' menu choice (from the file menu) has disappeared.

How do I get it back."

I've heard about this problem before and as I recall, this is a VSS-specific issue. However, it could affect other source control providers as well. This post explains how to regain the ability to change source control (unbind solution/project, rebind, disconnect/remove from source control, etc) The issue occurs under the following conditions:

  1. You have Visual SourceSafe 6.0x and Visual Studio .NET 2002/2003 on your machine
  2. You install Visual Studio Whidbey 2005 CTP or beta AND you install Visual SourceSafe 2005.
  3. You uninstall VS2005 and/or SourceSafe2005.

Cause: SourceSafe 6.0x and SourceSafe 2005 cannot be installed side-by-side. When you install VSS 2005, it overwrites VSS 6.0x's registry settings.

To Fix: Re-register the integration dll (ssscc.dll) from the VSS 6.0x install, either by running regsvr32.exe (regsvr32 ssscc.dll) or by running ssint.exe provided with VSS6. If you're using VSS automation for FrontPage projects, you should also re-register the SSAPI.dll for IVSS interfaces.

I have not confirmed that these steps work as advertised so if the fix works (or does not work) for you, please drop a comment to let future readers know.

Published 21 February 05 12:28 by KorbyP

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Comments

# Dennis van der Stelt said on February 24, 2005 10:53 AM:
Worked for me! Thanks a lot!
# Doogal said on June 15, 2005 9:45 AM:
Worked for me too, thanks!
# Shardool Karnik said on July 1, 2005 3:02 PM:
Perfect. I had tried this before reading your post, but it said it was integrating for visual basic only and I didn't check it as I thought it wouldn't work. But after I read your post I happened to open it again and it was there. Thx!
# legend-81 said on July 12, 2005 2:09 PM:
That did the trick! Thanks a ton.
# ms said on July 19, 2005 12:23 PM:
I am facing a reverse problem than this. I installed Visual Studio Whidbey 2005 beta 2 and so VSS 8.x.. When I first start VS05 , the source control menu has only one option, "Launch Source Safe". I get everything what I want but when I try to open it in VS it says the "source control plugin" required not found and it would be diabled for this project. I open the full solution and it shows me full source control menu but if I try to use any option in that menu it gives me error and restart the VS. I dont see any source control menu on restart !!

Everything still works fine for the Visual Studio .Net 2003 which is also installed on my machine along with Visual Studio 6.0 ? any comments ?
# Roger said on August 12, 2005 5:21 PM:
Thanks. You saved me a whole bunch of trouble. Worked perfectly.
# Shannon Frick said on August 12, 2005 7:19 PM:
Thanks a lot! I installed Visual Studio 8 recently after uninstalling Whidbey 2005 beta 2, and found that running regsvr32.exe and/or ssint.exe as you suggested hooked up the VSS plugin again through Options->Source Control. Cheers! :)
# Johan said on October 10, 2005 7:58 AM:
Thanx. It worked for me. Good stuff out here by the way.
# Tino Dainese said on November 2, 2005 5:29 AM:
It workes - thanks.
# Jay said on November 28, 2005 12:33 PM:
Brilliant!!
# Stu said on January 4, 2006 9:57 AM:
Another scenario:

You installed VS 2005 Beta... started working on projects with source control. Uninstalled Beta version to install production version. Open up project in production version and you get source control plug-in not found error message.

running ssint.exe within your VSS install will fix as well, thanks for the info!
# Bent said on February 2, 2006 5:08 AM:
Re 'Change Source Control' Menu Disappears in Visual Studio: Your solution running ssint.exe fixed the problem.
# Sergey said on March 29, 2006 7:57 AM:
It is not the first month I was trying to solve this problem. But nothing helps... I was installing/reinstalling both versions of VS2005 and VS2003 and VSS6 and VSS8, was running SSINT.EXE numeruios times and even was tring to clean up registry containing VSS-related tiems. Nothing helps... All the time I get an error "The operation could not be completed" doing any VSS-specific task in VS2003, like even changing VSS setting in Tools\Options.
So now I beleive that only low-level format will help me:(
# Saumil said on May 11, 2006 6:33 AM:
Thanks a lot !!! Its working fine for all projects except the ones of presentation (i.e. ASP.Net UI projects having aspx pages). Which dll should I register for this problem??
# Mary H said on June 16, 2006 8:10 AM:
I just found your post today.  I lost VSS as my source control provider when I tried installing an alternative source control provider (CVS)  in an attempt to download some open source code from the internet.  It appeared that CVS installed itself as my primary source control provider, and after uninstalling CVS, Visual Studio (2003) was no longer able to recognize VSS.  Again, to echo most everyone else's comments, your suggestion worked for me too.  I just reregistered ssscc.dll and everything worked fine.  Many thanks!
# Aparimeeth said on July 3, 2006 10:19 AM:
Though the file ssscc.dll was not found intially
I coppied the same from another sys and registerd the same

thats Cool It worked Perfectly .....
# piyush said on July 5, 2006 2:33 AM:
how do install this ... i am facing problem where ... my project is under source control and when i try to open it... i am receiving message as....
Ur project is under source control ... and source control provider is not installed ..
how do I go about this problem ...
Plz guide me.
# David said on July 17, 2006 2:24 PM:
I tried this and at first it seemed to work. Then I noticed I was disconnected. I tried to connect which took about 15 minutes, then checked out a bunch of projects. It looked like it was working but at the end of all the checkouts it re-disconnected. One time giving me a catastrophic failure.

The difference is, I'm working with TFS instead of of VSS 2005.
# Moose said on July 21, 2006 3:30 PM:
For anyone who needs to cut and paste:

regsvr32 "c:\program files\vss\win32\ssscc.dll"

That did the trick.
# P said on September 11, 2006 1:14 PM:
Running ssint.exe  worked for me
# Morgan said on February 8, 2007 6:07 PM:

This worked for me for after I had installed and then uninstalled a crappy SVN plugin to test out with visual studio 6.  Re-registering the ssscc.dll  (in C:\program files\VSS\win32) with regsvr32 command re-enabled VSS integration in VS 6.

Thank you!

# Open From Source Control - Visual Studio.NET 2003 « devK2.net said on April 22, 2007 7:47 PM:

PingBack from http://devk2.wordpress.com/2007/04/22/open-from-source-control-visual-studionet-2003/

# Open From Source Control - Visual Studio.NET 2003 « Grumpy Wookie said on April 22, 2007 7:48 PM:

PingBack from http://grumpywookie.wordpress.com/2007/04/22/open-from-source-control-visual-studionet-2003/

# Reg said on May 11, 2007 10:22 AM:

worked perfectly.  thank you!  i was using VSS 2005 with VSS 6 still installed.  uninstalled VSS 2005.

# http://msdn.technetweb3.orcsweb.com/korbyp/archive/2005/02/21/377555.aspx said on March 23, 2008 3:22 AM:

PingBack from http://frankthefrank.info/entry.php?id=kwws%3d22pvgq1whfkqhwzhe61rufvzhe1frp2nrue%7cs2dufklyh2533823525426%3a%3a8881dvs%7b

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