sql server management studio won't open

Yes, no Oracle today. A very short blogpost about opening SQL Server Management Studio. It didn’t open, only a splash screen pops up.

Found the solution at DBA Stack Exchange, but thought it would be nice to summarize this in a blog-post.

Logging gave no clue:

Running ssms.exe with logging (C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 18\Common7\IDE\Ssms.exe” -log C:\drop\log.txt)
C:\Users(user)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\AppEnv\15.0\ActivityLog.xml .

Solutions mentioned (first one worked for me):

“I just overlaid the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop.8.0.dll in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 18\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies with the copy from ..\PrivateAssemblies\Interop and the IDE opens”
Another solution: “For me there was an additional Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop.8.0“

This is known issue and there is new official workaround which published by the SSMS developers team.

You can view the open ticket at the Microsoft feedback system .

SQL Server Management Studio 18 won’t open