Windows "Unable to resolve your shell environment in a reasonable time." when launched via shortcut

[dbaileyut]

Type: Bug

Hi,

When I launch VS Code from a shortcut in Windows, I get:

2025-06-12 16:23:41.567 [error] Unable to resolve your shell environment in a reasonable time. Please review your shell configuration and restart.
2025-06-12 16:23:42.762 [error] resolving shell environment failed Unable to resolve your shell environment in a reasonable time

If I launch from the command line with code.cmd (or code-insiders.cmd) I don't receive this error. It tried passing --prof-startup to the .exe to get more details but it didn't profile.

My shell is PowersShell 7.5.1.

Thanks!

VS Code version: Code - Insiders 1.101.0-insider (dfaf441, 2025-06-11T15:35:29.777Z)
OS version: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26100
Modes:

System Info

Item	Value
CPUs	Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6240 CPU @ 2.60GHz (4 x 2594)
GPU Status	2d_canvas: unavailable_software canvas_oop_rasterization: disabled_off direct_rendering_display_compositor: disabled_off_ok gpu_compositing: disabled_software multiple_raster_threads: enabled_on opengl: disabled_off rasterization: disabled_software raw_draw: disabled_off_ok skia_graphite: disabled_off video_decode: disabled_software video_encode: disabled_software vulkan: disabled_off webgl: unavailable_software webgl2: unavailable_software webgpu: unavailable_software webnn: unavailable_software
Load (avg)	undefined
Memory (System)	16.00GB (5.75GB free)
Process Argv	--crash-reporter-id 79dae070-e5f9-40b9-8421-24be045f4218
Screen Reader	no
VM	40%

Extensions: none

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[ruby3141]

I experienced same issue on stable release.

The docs page linked with "Learn More" button saids,

This section applies to macOS and Linux environments only.

So it's maybe by some little mistake on platform check logic.
It would be safe for Windows users to ignore the message I guess?
Maintainers' confirmation would be highly appreciated.

[edjia]

same issue

2025-06-13 13:54:24.439 [error] Unable to resolve your shell environment in a reasonable time. Please review your shell configuration and restart.
2025-06-13 13:54:24.439 [error] resolving shell environment failed Unable to resolve your shell environment in a reasonable time. Please review your shell configuration and restart.

[bpasero]

Are people able to get rid of this error when they increase the application.shellEnvironmentResolutionTimeout setting to a higher value?

For the 1.101 release we pushed support for resolving environment variables from the PowerShell profile, see https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_101#_windows-shell-environment-discovery

[dbaileyut]

I set application.shellEnvironmentResolutionTimeout to the max 120s and it still timed out.

[bpasero]

Please see if you can find any logged output that could help us find the source of the issue:

• run code --verbose from the command line
• reproduce the issue
• attach the log files you find from running the command "Open Logs Folder"

@connor4312 this seems to hint to a problem that the command you create never returns

[connor4312]

Yes, verbose logs would be appreciated, thanks!

[dbaileyut]

See attached. Note, when launching from the command line, I cannot reproduce the issue. I appended --verbose to a copy of the shortcut's target (the .exe).

vscode-resolveShellEnv-windows-timeout.zip

[connor4312]

Thanks for the logs. I'm curious what you see if you just open cmd.exe and run C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7\pwsh.exe -Command "Write-Output 'fda0bbe81247'; [System.Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariables() | ConvertTo-Json -Compress; Write-Output 'fda0bbe81247'" manually? (That's the command we're trying to run to get environment variables and is stalling)