Visual studio forgets window settings and makes a mess

Question

I have this problem where I open Visual Studio and the internal windows are scattered all over the place. None of them are docked; some that should be visible have become in

Answer 1

In my case its not the Window layout being corrupted but Intellisense offering code completion and pop-up help. Never had this issue for the last decade, now it happens 3 times a day at least. Win8.1, Visual Studio 2013, ReSharper 8 and now ReSharper 9 (in hopes the upgrade would fix it).

I now routinely have to

• close the solution,
• Tools/Import-Export Settings/Reset all settings
• Close Visual Studio
• Open Visual Studio Import my saved settings
• RE-open the solution and continue working

I can then work fine again for quite some time until something goes awry... lets say a stack-overflow while I'm debugging. At that point I just know my settings are screwed and my Intellisense is dead again.

I'm starting to wonder if it isn't something to do with a latest Visual Studio update. There are things in there I never use like the advertising crap and Office development integration. MS Office has its own issues, like Office 64 bit not being seen by any other application such as Quicken as an installed email program. Or maybe its a conflict with ReSharper which wants to overtake and 'extend' the Intellisense feature.

Either way, I'm sure its a different manifestation of the same issue: Visual Studio settings are going sideways during normal use.