I found that opening some (but not all) projects causes a VS 15.3.5 crash when GhostDoc 5.7.17240 is enabled. Disabling the GhostDoc add-in allows VS to open without crashing.
In specific, two open source projects where it's been seen:
- https://github.com/IdentityModel/IdentityModel2/
- https://github.com/domaindrivendev/Swashbuckle.AspNetCore/
Another user actually filed an issue on that Swashbuckle project: https://github.com/domaindrivendev/Swashbuckle.AspNetCore/issues/491
After I found the issue via trial-and-error (and "/safemode") on VS I mentioned it to the person on that issue and disabling GhostDoc solved the problem for them, too.
From the ActivityLog.xml generated during a failed startup the only warning/error I see involves "Visual Studio Common Project System" crashing. That warning happens after I see GhostDoc reporting an "unexpected system error mode"
<entry>
<record>200</record>
<time>2017/09/20 15:20:53.854</time>
<type>Warning</type>
<source>VisualStudio</source>
<description>Unexpected system error mode before loading package [GhostDoc]</description>
<guid>{F646EA44-FEB2-4168-802A-80C9B64BB8BB}</guid>
</entry>
...
<entry>
<record>1110</record>
<time>2017/09/20 15:21:10.313</time>
<type>Warning</type>
<source>ExtensionCrashNotification</source>
<description>Extension 'Visual Studio Common Project System 15.3.219.54044' was involved in a crash. Stack follows:</description>
</entry>
The logs didn't seem to provide much detail or help. The way I discovered this was to disable all of my extensions and re-enable them one at a time. Eventually I re-enabled GhostDoc and the crash hit. Disabled GhostDoc, re-enabled all of my other extensions, everything works. Re-enable GhostDoc - crash again.