Visual studio 2017 installer won't run after extracting

I had this problem too. SHClark's answer didn't work for me. I figured out myself what was causing the problem on my computer: Mirekusoft Install Monitor. I disabled both its services and that solved the problem. (I guess that's not an extremely likely program for someone to have running, but it could be a problem common to install monitors in general?)

I also heard from someone on the Visual Studio Community forum that RivaTunerStatistics (used for gaming) can cause this problem too.


One of my co-workers encountered the same problem. We spent 4 hours searching for solutions, uninstalling VS and other software that we thought might be the culprit.

In the end, THIS LINK helped us figure it out. The problem is somehow explained there and is linked to NODE_OPTIONS variable. If you have that variable set, remove it then restart your computer. This solved his problem.

Configuration: Widows 10, Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise.

I hope this helps you


I was able to resolve my problem after 4 days of troubleshooting with Microsoft support. I'm developing on a Dell laptop and the support technician believes one of the Dell services was causing issues with the winmgmt service.

Below is a command that failed to run. Then after making sure we had an OS restore point saved, we issued the /resetRepository command. After that, the VS 2017 Pro installer was able to execute without error.

EDIT: Adding the exact steps and code sample below:

Step 1: Create a Windows system restore point.

Step 2: From the command prompt with administrative rights or elevated privileges, execute the following command: net stop winmgmt

Step 3: Open a Windows Explorer and locate the path to C:\windows\system32\WBEM\ folder and rename the Repository folder to something else like RepositoryOLD (right click and choose 'Rename Folder').

Step 4: restart the computer

Step 5: From the command prompt with administrative rights or elevated privileges, execute the following command: net stop winmgmt

C:\>net stop winmgmt
The Windows Management Instrumentation service is stopping.
The Windows Management Instrumentation service could not be stopped.    

Step 6: From the command prompt with administrative rights or elevated privileges, execute the following command: winmgmt /resetRepository

C:\>winmgmt /resetRepository
WMI repository has been reset

Step 7: restart the computer.

Hope this helps anyone with a similar Visual Studio 2017 installer issue.