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Every once in a while, Visual Studio decides to mess up my colors.

This is what happens:

visual studio broken colors

It should look like this:

good colors visual studio

I'm not sure what is causing this, but I hope someone else has experienced this before and was able to fix it.

3
  • Are they actually messed up in the settings or is this just a rendering issue? Mar 5, 2012 at 10:57
  • Which Visual Studio version, and what do you do to reset the colors?
    – harrymc
    Mar 5, 2012 at 15:12
  • to reset the colors, I restart Visual Studio
    – jao
    Mar 5, 2012 at 20:17

8 Answers 8

7
+100

Check this question at StackOverflow:

Basically the person asking the questing figures out himself that there is a plug-in overriding the colour settings. My tip would be to check any plug-ins you have installed and see if they have any font or colour settings

Also found this link although I don't know if it's really related.

3
  • From the screenshots, it doesn’t look like Jao has VAX installed.
    – Synetech
    Mar 9, 2012 at 19:59
  • No, but I figured this problem is probably not isolated to VAX, but applies to other plug-ins able to mess with the color setup.
    – Qw4z1
    Mar 9, 2012 at 22:20
  • If plugins mess with syntax-coloring without making it obvious to the user (and providing an easy way to disable it), then that’s a bad plugin indeed—especially since anyone using VS is likely smart enough to figure out how to access the plugin’s settings.
    – Synetech
    Mar 9, 2012 at 22:22
4

It looks like you might be running ReSharper and have "color identifiers" enabled. They are optimized for a white background, I've had the same problem.

To fix go to ReSharper Options: Code Inspection/Settings and disable Color identifiers.

I don't know the reason they switch on and off, but it's probably because other users in your team have them enabled in their ReSharper "settings layer" which you can manage under ReSharper/Manage Options.

1
  • Sorry, I don't have resharper installed.
    – jao
    Mar 14, 2012 at 7:39
4

I had the same issue and I just changed the Color Theme to Blue (Tools > Options > Environment > General > Visual Experience > Color Theme) clicked OK.. then change it back to DARK and all colors went back to normal.

0
1

I've encountered this before. I've noticed that this usually occurs after I update an addon or a component.

While this isn't a permanent fix, I suggest that you make a backup of your fonts & colors settings.

  1. Tools > Import and Export Settings...
  2. Select Export selected environment settings
  3. All Settings > Options > Environment > Fonts and Colors (check this option only)
  4. Save the settings file under recognizable name (eg: VimTheme.vssettings)

The next time all your colors get messed up, simply import that settings file and your fonts & colors should be fine.

2
  • It happens quite infrequently, sometimes three or four times a day, and some days everything is fine. After restarting visual studio the colors are OK. So maybe it's a rendering issue, I don't know
    – jao
    Mar 6, 2012 at 17:38
  • Mmm, you're reminding me of another problem I sometimes get with SQL Management Studio: whenever I move the window from one monitor to another, the entire code area messes up. Whenever that happens, I quickly enter/exit fullscreen (alt+shift+enter twice). I wonder if that would have an effect in your Visual Studio. Probably not, but worth a shot.
    – Derethus
    Mar 6, 2012 at 19:30
1

I just had to restart Visual Studio to fix it.

3
0
  1. Close Visual Studio
  2. Open a registry editor (regedit is sufficient)
  3. Delete the following registry entry:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\UseDebugColorScheme
  4. Restart Visual Studio
2
  • that registry key does not exist on my computer
    – jao
    Mar 10, 2012 at 12:30
  • Too bad; that means some other unknown thing is wrong. :-( Perhaps clearing the cache by deleting the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\ThemeColorCache might help. If not, then try doing a repair install of VS.
    – Synetech
    Mar 10, 2012 at 16:56
0

From the screenshots, it looks like the same color scheme with a few changes. Have you changed any of the colors yourself, or even just briefly experimented with themes? Did you for example, make a copy of a theme, change a few colors, then cancel?

A screenshot of your Theme menu can help narrow down the problem.

Next time the theme changes, make sure that the correct theme is still selected in the Theme menu. What may be happening is that now and then, you press some key combination or chord that triggers the theme to change (e.g., accidentally opening the Theme menu and pressing a key which corresponds to the other theme), or via a hotkey that specifically changes the theme (you can check this in the keyboard section of the Options dialog).

0

It was hardware related. Switching off hardware acceleration fixed it.

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