Can't get any Red-gate tools (Prompt / Search) to load into SSMS at all

I've been a Red-gate fan and user for close to 10 years. However, I've about reached my limit with them and now, I can't even use their products at all. I was getting the "The Add-in 'SSMS Integration Pack Framework' failed to load or caused an exception" error and was getting constant crashes in SSMS. So I attempted to follow various products through the Windows Programs manager and manually (deleting folders / registry entries) to try to get rid of it. Eventually, I was able to get it to go away after uninstalling several products. However, I can't get any tools loaded back into SSMS at all.

I have a Prompt license for Pro v7 (Toolbelt expired in 2017 or so?). But I've also tried to install the most recent Search version as well. I've tried both the normal download as well as the direct FTP link to the latest install package. I assumed that completely uninstalling ALL red-gate products would eventually help. But despite several uninstall, install, and reboot sequences, I can't get any of them working. I have deleted the license files, setting files, etc and nothing seems to help.

Any time I install the products, I can't get a red-gate toolbar to show up in SSMS 2017. It's not a case of the toolbar being there but not enabled / checked in the toolbar setup. It's just literally not an option in the SSMS interface anywhere.

So despite having a valid license worth thousands of dollars, I am unable to use the products at all and support will no longer assist unless I pay them $300+ for a new support contract. I'm hoping someone here may be able to assist with some other suggestions (even though I've scoured Google and the forums trying to find something that might work).

I'm not sure if this is an SSMS problem or not since I don't know the exact mechanics of how the toolbar gets loaded in SSMS in the first place. But for now, I'm completely stumped and frustrated.

JJ Blodgett May 20, 2019 17:21

Comments

7 comments

Seems weird that this is the info I get when I copy because the "SSMS" version listed in the image is v17.9.1 even though there's a component that references v14. Not sure what that's about but this is what I have:

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 14.0.17285.0
Microsoft Analysis Services Client Tools 14.0.1016.283
Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) 10.0.16299.15
Microsoft MSXML 3.0 4.0 5.0 6.0
Microsoft Internet Explorer 9.11.16299.0
Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0.30319.42000
Operating System 6.3.16299

And this is what I mean about the toolbars. Red-gate doesn't show up at all as something I can even enable. So it's clearly not "hidden" somewhere. I've tried the ApexSQL tool as a possible replacement for Prompt but it's pretty weak. I literally only want the "expand wildcard" option and SQL Search to work. Everything else I don't want to use at all. But I can't get those simple things working for some reason.

And I didn't explicitly say it before, but I did remove the SIPFw and RedGate.SIPFramework.addin items as mentioned in several threads.

Also, I'm on Windows 10 Pro. 1709; 16299.1004 for now.

pasllc May 20, 2019 17:34

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ApexSQL have been known to actively hijack the way we hook in to SSMS to prevent Redgate products from working, so really at this stage I can only recommend that you uninstall ApexSQL and try again.

v14 is Microsofts internal build number for SSMS 17.x.

Russell D May 22, 2019 10:11

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Russell D said:

ApexSQL have been known to actively hijack the way we hook in to SSMS to prevent Redgate products from working, so really at this stage I can only recommend that you uninstall ApexSQL and try again.

v14 is Microsofts internal build number for SSMS 17.x.

Thanks for responding. I actually added ApexSQL as a last resort since I couldn't get Red-gate working with any other combination of methods. For confirmation, I'll go ahead and remove it and try again. I did have Apex Search installed during some of the previous installation attempts because I couldn't get SQL Search installed. So it's possible there was an Apex product installed during most of the attempts but I'm pretty sure it wasn't all of them. But I'll give it a shot anyway.

The only other add-in I'm using is the SSMS Tools Pack which gives me a much better way to restore tabs and sessions when my SSMS inevitably crashes once every week or two. I could possible remove that as well if needed. That's the only other things I haven't tried to remove before installing. Maybe it's hijacking something as well but who knows.

pasllc May 22, 2019 16:50

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So I've made some progress but it's more confusing in some respects. I uninstalled Apex and SSMS Tools Pack. But, I also installed SSMS v18 (GA). So now I have SSMS 17 and 18 running.

Then I installed SQL Search v3.3.0.2332 and SQL Prompt v7 because that's the version I have a license for. But I get conflicting results from the different versions and they don't match at all.

SSMS 17: SQL Prompt 7 SHOWS UP but SQL Search 3 DOES NOT
Search doesn't show in the menus anywhere and customize shows 2 toolbar choices for SQL Prompt. However, SQL Search is nowhere to be found.

The second SQL Prompt item only shows the Command optios of "About...", "Check for updates", and "Manage Licenses". I added the About button to the Toolbar for both Categories and both showed the exact same version of Prompt 7.5.

SSMS 18: SQL Search 3 SHOWS UP but SQL Prompt 7 DOES NOT
I don't have any option for SQL Prompt whatsoever but SQL Search is clearly an option in the Toolbar now.

So I guess I'm making progress, but it seems silly that I can't run SSMS 17 or 18 with both. I don't really care which one I use. If it will work in 18 but not 17, I'll carry on with 18. But when neither work, I'm still left with an incomplete environment no matter what I choose.

pasllc May 22, 2019 19:21

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I've not heard of the SSMS tools pack causing any issues but if they're utilising the same hooks and load first its entirely possible.

Are there any load failures for Redgate plugins in the ssms activity log?

Russell D May 23, 2019 09:39

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I actually uninstalled SSMS tools pack anyway during the uninstall / install just to be sure.

Also, if you're referring to "C:\Users\[MY_ACCOUNT]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\AppEnv\14.0\ActivityLog.xml", there were some previous failures. But now nothing updates when I open SSMS so it appears it's just legacy data / errors. But it did say it couldn't load some of the modules that were uninstalled. But once I installed them back, the ActivityLog.xml doesn't even appear to update anymore. It's got a timestamp from around 24 hours ago even though I've opened the interface several times since then. Not sure if that's normal or expected.

pasllc May 23, 2019 15:34

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I'll confess to not knowing a huge amount about the activity log, but now you mention it mine hasn't updated since March either.

Russell D May 24, 2019 08:14

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