Visual Studio 2012 "Extensions and Updates" "Unable to connect to the remote server"

Question

This has been the case unfortunatly for the past couple of months. I can't install new or update packages from Tools ==> Extensions and Updates I tried everything, yet I am unable to find the reason. I've tried :

1. Access NuGet and download packages from "Package Manager Console" Install-Package = SUCCESS
2. Access repositories using Web browsers, Visual studion internal browser = SUCCESS
3. Same window in Visual Studio 2010 = SUCCESS

Visual Studio 2012 - Doesn't work

Visual Studio 2010 - Works!

Answer 1

As it turns out for some reason -possibly due to an RC-, My registry settings were pointing to a different url that was getting redirected.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0_Config\ExtensionManager\Repositories

AND I changed

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0_Config\ExtensionManager\Repositories{0f45e408-7995-4375-9485-86b8db553dc9}(Default)

to http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/Services/v2011/Extension.svc instead of http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=251029

I changed

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0_Config\ExtensionManager\Repositories{aeb9cb40-d8e6-4615-b52c-27e307f8506c}(Default)

to http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Services/v2011/sample.svc instead of http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=251031

Answer 2

Remove the local cache of extensions and download them all again.

The easiest thing to do is to rename

%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Visual Studio version\Extensions\

to

%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Visual Studio version\Extensions.old\

and run visual studio, it will update recreate the folder.

Answer 3

WeSam Abdallah's hint worked perfectly for me! Just try to open the link provided in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0_Config\ExtensionManager\Repositories{0f45e408-7995-4375-9485-86b8db553dc9}(Default) in your browser and see what it is changed to automatically. For Visual Studio 2013 I had to change the URL from https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=309922 to https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/services/dev12/extension.svc

Answer 4

This answer is an update for Visual Studio 2015.

I tried the registry hack as well as renaming the Extensions folder, and neither solution worked.

However, in my case, the issue seems to have been because I'm behind a proxy at work. This worked for me:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/32650801/2452084