Hi Ian,

Last year Microsoft started to release the ide's for free. First of all with Vs2013 community and more recently with vs2015.

VS2015 no longer supports the older add-in system which is what visual micro used to be. The add-ins were difficult to support and altering the interface was very prone to cause problems. 

Microsoft also released a new extension/plugin installer system when Vs2012 was released which is more reliable and easier to maintain than the older system. The new installer doesn't work in Vs2010.

If you need the last release of vm for 2010 then I think it's here but let me know if you have a problem. https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/aff7d8be-02a2-4afb-b5c9-3c32e8982...

With so many major changes in the arduino world at the moment the releases of visual micro are having to come through quite quickly so if you intend to use ide's that were just out of beta or released after the 2010 version of visual micro you might encounter problems.

Sorry it's a pain. if you have problems with the installs then please read the first point in the Vs2010 section of the faq. If you install VS2015 then please read the note about installing C++ on the downloads page.

Thanks

Yes 2012 was a but ugly. I think we all have to take the new software otherwise we get stuck with older lesser functionality.

It's a relief that the new versions are free. It was hard work for me to support 2008 and 2010.

I think they got it right with 2013 and 2015 is just a little better than that although annoying that C++ is optional and not std.