Can't find Visual Studio 2015 on the Start menu

This article helps you resolve the issue where Microsoft Visual Studio icon is not visible on the Start menu.

Applies to: Visual Studio 2015

Symptoms

The Visual Studio icon no longer appears on the Start menu. Although your Visual Studio installation is not corrupted, you find that the Visual Studio 2015 application icon is moved out of the Visual Studio 2015 installation folder.

Resolution

If you are running Windows 7, you can find the Visual Studio 2015 application at the top of the All Programs list grouped with other application icons. If you are running Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8 or Windows 11, you can find the icon listed under the V grouping. If you still can not find the icon, use Windows search (press the Windows logo key, and then enter Visual Studio 2015).

Note

The application icon will no longer be in the Visual Studio 2015 folder.

If you still can not find Visual Studio after a successful installation, open File Explorer, and then navigate to the following path:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe

Double-click the devenv.exe file. If you installed Visual Studio to a drive other than the C drive, go to the folder where you installed Visual Studio, and then locate Common7\IDE\devenv.exe.