VSCode vanishes from the computer (Windows)

[Murilodsv]

This seems to be a persistent bug: #154726, #188893, reddit

I hope to shed some light on what happened (at least in my case) to get this issue solved.

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What happens?

VScode shortcuts suddenly stop working after re-booting the system (Windows). After some digging, it seems all the installation files in %localappdata%\Programs\Microsoft VS Code are moved to a sub-folder _:

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Why?

If we pay attention, there's a unins000.exe just created the day before the bug with two files .dat and .msg, which are encrypted but with some clue inside, for example, the unins000.msg:

After using some regular expression to decode the .dat, I could find:

When the bug happened I was working on a server, then I accessed the server and found that one of the Python extensions tried to update:

So it seems the extension update on the server somehow triggered the Inno Setup uninstallation on my local computer. This, in turn, could not handle the tunnelling and moved the vscode files to a _ sub-folder (Please correct me if I am wrong)

What is funny is that I could work for a few more hours and the problem only really appeared to me the next day after re-booting my local computer.

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Interim solution

• Re-instal vscode
• Delete the %localappdata%\Programs\Microsoft VS Code\_

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Does this issue occur when all extensions are disabled?: No

• VS Code Version: 1.96.2
• OS Version: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26100

Steps to Reproduce:

1. From a windows computer, access a linux server via the ms-vscode-remote.remote-ssh extension (v0.116.1)
2. Update a Python extension (e.g., ms-python.python or other)
3. Re-boot windows