Unclear why this happened for my installation, but Visual Studio (VS 2022 preview at this time) had an offline location (good), but no package source to nuget.

This caused my build to fail on packages not found in the offline directory.

Hence I ended up adding a Package source in Visual Studio for Nuget as:

 nuget.org
 https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json

Which then allowed VS to do a Restore of packages to succeed.

So, I did not have to do a nuget install Newtonsoft.json -source ... type command on each failed package, as mentioned in other posts.

Hi @Rod Falanga

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A!

Does the Entity Framework Core you mentioned refer to this Nuget package? I can install it in Visual Studio, can you provide more information?

• Update:
  What package source did you choose? Did you choose nuget.org?
  Please make sure you have selected the correct package source, you can upload a screenshot of the nuget solution manager.
  
• Update:

If your Visual Studio package source does not have nuget.org, you can try to add it to the package source.
Name:
nuget.org
Source:
https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json

Sincerely,
Peng
*
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If you want to do an offline update from VS17.12 to 17.13 , you can follow below steps:

1. Update the layout to a specific version of the product.

• Go to the Visual Studio 2022 Release History page and download a particular fixed version bootstrapper(e.g vs_Enterprise17.13.0), copy it into your layout, and use it to update the layout to that exact version specified in the bootstrapper.
• Run the --layout command in an elevated prompt to download the latest packages into your layout.

vs_enterprise.exe --layout c:\VSLayout

2. Update your Visual Studio 2022 by running the Visual Studio Installer > Update or you can also use the following command:

vs_enterprise.exe update --noWeb --quiet --installpath "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Enterprise"

Update

The easiest and fastest way to update your offline Visual Studio instances: using a minimal offline layout.

Do i have to download the entire VS Layout package everytime if there is an version update?

Unlike a full Visual Studio layout, a minimal layout only contains the updated packages, so it is always smaller and faster to generate and deploy.

1.Generating a minimal layout.

MinimalLayout.exe generate --targetLocation c:\VSLayout\ --productIds Microsoft.VisualStudio.Product.Enterprise --baseVersion 17.12.5 --targetVersion 17.13.0  --languages en-US

2.Update the Visual Studio Installer

vs_enterprise.exe --quiet --update --offline C:\VSLayout\vs_installer.opc

3.Update the Visual Studio application

vs_enterprise.exe update --noWeb --quiet --installpath "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Enterprise"

Docs Referred:

Update the layout to a specific version of the product

Update Visual Studio from a layout

Hello @Peter Volz ,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

I have verified that the command which you are using is correct.

Is there any detailed error message? There are many reasons which may cause the process to stop.

I suggest first verify that you have enough disk space(C drive) and then try to check the network connection, make sure it’s stable and try to connect to use another network. Make sure that there’s no proxy/rule/policy/antivirus on your machine/network which may block the process from downloading the packages.

Try to use --verify and --fix parameters to see if the error can be fixed(VisualStudioSetup.exe --layout C:\VS.NET --verify --fix).

If above methods don’t work, please download a new VS 2022 Professional setup file from here: Downloads again, save it to a clean folder, run CMD as administrator, change to use a new layout folder and run the command again.

Feel free to let us know the results.

Sincerely,

Tianyu

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Hi Billy,

Thank you for contacting us.

Regarding your concern, please note that Microsoft enforces activation per machine to prevent piracy and ensure compliance. You can still install Visual Studio Professional offline, but it requires manual product key entry or volume license setup, not a universal multi-access key. Below are the steps you should take:

• You first need to install Visual Studio online
• Create a layout for offline install, you can check this link for more specific guidance
• Manually download and install missing certificate: 
  1. Download the certificate: http://www.microsoft.com/pkiops/certs/Microsoft%20Windows%20Code%20Signing%20PCA%202024.crt 
  2. Double-click the .crt file to open the Certificate window.  
  3. Click “Install Certificate…”  
  4. Choose “Local Machine” (you may need admin rights).  
  5. Select “Place all certificates in the following store”  
  6. Click “Browse…” and choose: Trusted Root Certification Authorities. Click Next, then Finish.  
  You should see a confirmation message: “The import was successful.”  
• Copy the layout folder that you have just created to your offline device and run this command in the layout folder

    vs_professional.exe --noweb
  

  → Visual Studio Professional 2022 will be install offline
• Go to Help → About Visual Studio → License Status → Click Unlock with a Product Key. Enter the Product Key and click Apply
• Visual Studio creates a request file containing your installation ID. Save this file and transfer it to an internet-accessed device.
• On a device with internet access, go to the Microsoft Licensing Activation site (provided in the Visual Studio activation dialog) → Upload the request file → Microsoft will generate a response file then transfer the response file back to the offline machine.
• In Visual Studio’s activation dialog, select Use Response File → Browse to the file and apply it → Visual Studio will confirm activation.

I hope that these instructions will be helpful! If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out, I'm here to help.

Happy holiday!

Hi @Mehdi Khaleghian | MOQdigital ,

Apologies for the delayed response. Can you please follow the steps below and see if it resolves this issue?

1. Open Visual Studio, go to "Debug" --> "Options.."
2. Search for "Nuget Package Manager" --> General
3. Click on "Clear All Nuget Cache(s)" and wait for it to clear. (If it throws error, please note the error, and close all running instance of Visual Studio/applications that might be using the package manager). This would ensure that the local cache is cleared properly. You may get more details of caches being cleared by looking into "Output" window after performing this step.
4. After the step above completes, go to "Debug" --> "Options.." again.
5. Under "Nuget Package Manager" --> Package Sources. Make a copy of the sources available there (Name and URL) in notepad. (This should help get rid of any non-printable characters which might be present in the copied string)
6. Delete all sources and click "OK". (This is to ensure that removal gets persisted, in case there was an error saving the sources originally due to non-visible characters etc.)
7. After the step above completes, go to "Debug" --> "Options.." again.
8. Under "Nuget Package Manager" --> "Package Sources", add the sources with details from notepad copied in step 5 above.
9. Click on "OK"

Check if you can build the project successfully.
In addition to the steps mentioned above, please ensure that "ASP.NET and web development" and "Azure Development" workloads are installed for this instance of Visual Studio. You can verify it by

1. "Start" --> "Visual Studio Installed"
2. Locate your version of VS in here (16.11.3) --> click on "Modify". If the above 2 workloads are not present, please select them and install.

In case you still run in to similar issues, you may try running dotnet restore with detailed verbosity (-v d parameter) to examine the error details. More details available here. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Please 'Accept as answer' if it helped so that it can help others in the community looking for help on similar topics.