---
title: "Finding the location of vsixInstaller.exe programmatically"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2010/4/9/finding-the-location-of-vsixinstallerexe-programmatically.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2010/4/9/finding-the-location-of-vsixinstallerexe-programmatically.html"
published: "2010-04-09T17:32:00"
updated: "2010-04-09T17:32:00"
tags: [".NET"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "It should always be here: %vs100comntools%\\..\\..\\IDE\\ or through the registry: HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\VisualStudio\\10.0\\ under key “ InstallDir ” Thanks Pablo !"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Finding the location of vsixInstaller.exe programmatically

By Roy Osherove April 9, 2010 In [.NET](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net)

**Historical article** · Originally published April 9, 2010; technical details may be outdated.

> It should always be here:

**%vs100comntools%\\..\\..\\IDE\\**

or through the registry:

> **HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\VisualStudio\\10.0\\**
>
> under key “**InstallDir**”

[Thanks Pablo](http://www.clariusconsulting.net/blogs/pga/archive/2009/07/07/DeployingaVSIXfromaMSI.aspx)!

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- Feb 23, 2010

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---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

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### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/