Steps to take when visualstudio online will not load

I had an odd thing happen today – I was invited to several different visualstudio online sites.

lets call them

abc.visualstudio.com and xyz.visualstudio.com

I was able to get to one of them just fine, and the other would not load no matter what I did – I even tried a different browser on a different PC, no luck.

I opened a case with microsoft and they suggested the following:

Regarding your issue: Please try the steps below

  1. Go to aka.ms/vssignout
  2. Clear all cookies
  3. Close browser
  4. Reopen browser in private mode
  5. Try to log in

This seemed to fix things, though I can’t explain why.

The reason I can’t explain it is, I had this issue in 3 configurations:

  • Chrome on mac
  • Safari on mac
  • Chrome on windows

I followed Microsoft’s steps on the Mac, using Safari, and was able to get right in afterwards.

Next I tried Chrome on windows without following the microsoft steps, and that worked too.

Logic would have it that I would need to repeat those steps the windows box before that worked, but that wasn’t the case, no idea why, but thought the steps should be posted for future reference just in case.

One thought on “Steps to take when visualstudio online will not load

  1. The 0365 authentication is crazy. I think you had some type of authentication cached, and clearing it (or trying in-private browsing or incognito mode) forces you to sign in and have a single identity in O365, going between tenants is a nightmare, unless your identity is the same and invited as a guest to another tenant. Since VSTS uses Microsoft account access by default (mostly) I use it for my work tenant and my organizational accounts on client tenants in incognito mode.

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