Intellisense not working in Visual Studio 2008

Published 01 December 07 10:49 PM | Richard

Since I upgraded my VS2008 Beta2 to the RTM, the intellisense has not been working. I have seen a few posts about this, some suggesting you need to reset the configuration by running

devenv.exe /safemode

(see http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms241278(VS.80).aspx)

but this did not work for me.

So I had a poke about in Tools|Option and found that on the Text Editor|All Languages that the three checkboxes for Statement Completion where showing neither empty or checked but a fully coloured box - which usually means an unknown settings. So a set these all to checked (a tick) and my Intellisense started working.

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Comments

# Manish said on January 15, 2008 03:54 PM:

Thanks a lot for the post the intellesense works for me now.

# David said on January 15, 2008 04:28 PM:

Hey buddy... Just wanted to thank you and let you know that this tip helped me out a lot. You probably saved me a day (or more) of frustration trying to figure out this Intellisense bug.

# Noli San Jose said on January 17, 2008 07:08 AM:

Thanks a lot!!! Saved me from cursing myself for installing VS2008.

# Johan said on January 22, 2008 10:00 AM:

Thanks a bunch! My intellisense for VS 2008 was borked from the beginning, and recently my 2005 stopped working too. Tried lots of things but this was the first one that worked! Good job!

# Mike said on February 10, 2008 01:28 PM:

Thanks a million saved my keyboard and monitor from a  good bashing!

# BA said on March 15, 2008 06:46 AM:

Have tried this suggestion, no effect. I think the fully colored box shows only, there are different settings for different languages.

# Richard said on March 15, 2008 10:14 PM:

Yes if you look at each language in the options dialog you see a check box for statement completion.

However I have found I only need to set the one for all languages

# Patrick Farnan said on March 18, 2008 10:58 PM:

Live saver! I was getting very frustrated with my VS 2008! This should boost my productivity no end!

# MKGagnon said on March 23, 2008 01:50 AM:

Thanks a ton.....I was pulling my hair out...

# Mark said on April 1, 2008 12:04 PM:

Wish I had seen this before uninstalling/reinstalling vs2008 - intellisense still didn't work - ReSharper had took it out.    Your tip fixed it, thanks very much.

# Jack Vo said on April 5, 2008 05:50 AM:

Hey guy ! I read the topic and do like that ! But my VS still not working with InteliSense

I don't know why !

When I uncheck Hide Advanced Parameter in Tool --> Options --> Chọn Text Editor --> Statement Completion. and restart VS it still checked.

hic, please help me to fix it !

# Ozzie Perez said on April 7, 2008 02:06 PM:

Duuuude!! Thanks... you're a life saver. :D

# Ozzie Perez » If Intellisense isn’t working in Visual Studio 2008 try this… said on April 7, 2008 02:17 PM:

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# Remy said on April 9, 2008 12:58 PM:

Hey, saved me a lot of time... thank you

# Praveen Modi said on April 16, 2008 03:23 PM:

Thanks so much. Intellisense works great now :-)

You made my day!

# Justin said on April 21, 2008 01:50 AM:

Sweet! It worked. I just uninstalled Resharper, it must have disabled Intellisense somehow.

# Jay said on April 25, 2008 10:11 PM:

Thanks, that worked great! I have resharper in VS2005 so it apparently also disabled intellisense in VS2008.

# Inga said on May 1, 2008 10:17 AM:

That worked nicely! It was driving me nuts cause the boxes were ticked for c# and still it wasn't working. just checking it for all languages did the trick for me!! Thanks! :)

# ahsan shafqat said on May 6, 2008 08:30 AM:

Thanks a lot

# Shayne said on May 19, 2008 09:05 PM:

I have tried this and it doesnt seem to stick. When I open up the setting the center one is a green square. I uncheck and check it so it has a check mark then hit ok and when I close it and go back it goes right back to the green square. Anybody else experience this?

# nawal said on May 21, 2008 06:24 AM:

intelli sense is not working in .aspx page. i m using visual studio 2008 express edition

# Marcus Hammarberg said on May 26, 2008 11:38 AM:

Thank you!

I did not want to re-install the Visual Studio 2008. You helped me!

Thanks

# James Jones said on June 3, 2008 09:08 PM:

God bless your soul.

# Aron said on June 6, 2008 08:32 AM:

DUDE YOU ARE AWESOME!!!!

I was going nuts over this!

# Dave said on June 10, 2008 06:47 PM:

Thanks, saved me a lottttt of time...

I was feed up with VS 2008...

# Digger76 said on June 11, 2008 09:37 AM:

Thank you so much!! I was looking and struggling for almost a day before i saw your tip. That's all it takes to solve this issue and IntelliSense works fine now. Saved me a lot of work.

# Nick Burns said on June 11, 2008 04:44 PM:

Just started a sample course and had the intellisense problem. Instead of getting frustrated and start digging through menus, I did a quick search for "vs 2008 intellisense not working" and in two clicks found this tip. Worked perfectly!

# Kevin said on June 11, 2008 08:40 PM:

I never leave comments, but I am so happy now that I just had to.  This is the best thing that has happened all week.

Thanks!!!

# Nick said on June 12, 2008 05:43 PM:

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!  You saved my life!

# Andy Hersche said on June 13, 2008 09:05 PM:

I ran into this issue with VSTS Development Edition 2008 as it all of a sudden appeared and with your help I'm up and running again with full power.

Can you handle another thank you... thanks

# vivdso said on June 17, 2008 08:41 PM:

I new google will never let me down. :)

Thanks a ton. Not sure why it was showing fully coverd boxes.

# Susan Sullivan said on June 24, 2008 08:28 PM:

Thank you very much.  Intellisense works again!

# Jason said on July 1, 2008 08:11 PM:

Saved me!  Thanks!

# dbopp.ch » Missing all options in the options dialog of Visual Studio 2008 said on August 14, 2008 03:12 PM:

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