Context: Toshiba Satellite L75D-A7280 64bit, Windows 10 Home 64bit
How long should I expect 2015 to spend repairing itself? It's been over 8 hours and we haven't moved beyond "Microsoft Build Tools 14.0 (x86)" for the better part of that time.
I'm tempted to delete the Visual Studio folder tree, run CCleaner on the registry to at least partially cleanup the mess, and then install from scratch.
NOTE
Killing the repair will require a reboot. If one tries to uninstall immediately after a killed repair, a message comes up about an install in progress. Rebooting seems to be the only thing to clear whatever flags have been left by the repair process.
LATER THAT SAME DAY
Killed it. Rebooted. Found vs_community.exe. Entered the command vs_community.exe /uninstall /force. It has been sitting doing not a lot for a few hours apart from 'Applying: Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Diagnostic Tools – x86'. Those five little dots come in, join up, and fly away again, over and over again. And again. And again. …
A COUPLE OF DAYS LATER
I've stumbled on a way of speeding up the uninstall. If you reboot, Visual Studio remembers where you were in the uninstall and picks up again where you left off, but one uninstall subtask further on.
AFTER THAT
Today I was going to reboot again then cancelled out of it. Suddenly the uninstall started moving quickly. A while after that it had stalled again. So again I went to reboot and then cancelled it. Again the uninstall picked up speed and worked through more subtasks. Now the blue "Applying" progress bar is 3/4 through rather than sitting for days at 1/10.
MANY MONTHS LATER
VS2015 also takes hours, maybe days, to uninstall. I'm removing it ahead of a VS2017 install. I started the process maybe 36 hours ago and it's not finished yet.
Best Answer
The setup is indeed creating problem. Tried to uninstall + repair, all behave the same. My environment is Win 10 x64. So until there is a proper update from Microsoft, we have to suffer like this.
The install/repair/uninstall time depends on the machine specifications only when it is going smoothly (in the ideal case). In case some thing(s) is conflicting, the setup simply stuck at initial stages for hrs.
This canceled sign-out as suggested by @Joe indeed pushed the progress bar, but I have to repeat it like a dozen of times. Still no better solution found. Also, After passing all of the components, in the final step of house keeping it again stuck for all night. Canceled Sign-out was no more effective. Eventually I have to force close the setup. BUT all this patience paid in the end, Visual Studio started properly without the warning of incomplete installation.
PS: at the time of writing, Microsoft FixIt, that is supposed to repair the blocked install/uninstall, does not support Windows 10 (check the screenshot below)
PPS: Some users suggested to turn off the antivirus/antimalware program in these situations. You can try this on your own risk.