Symptoms#

When trying to open Copilot / Conversations windows in Visual Studio 2026:

• “An exception occurred trying to create the content for this frame”
• Error in ActivityLog.xml saying Microsoft.VisualStudio.Copilot.UI.IViewModelServices cannot be found

The window fails to display properly. Here’s a memo of the cause and solution when I fixed it.

Cause#

Visual Studio 2026 includes Copilot functionality by default, but
if you migrated settings/extensions from Visual Studio 2022:

• Old GitHub Copilot / Copilot Chat extensions from VS2022 remain
• These old extensions conflict with the built-in Copilot

As a result, services for the Copilot UI cannot be found, causing errors.

Solution#

Disable or uninstall old Copilot extensions

1. Launch Visual Studio 2026

2. From the menu, open
   [Extensions] → [Manage Extensions]

3. Select [Installed] on the left side

4. In the search box at the top right, search for these keywords one by one:

   • Copilot
   • GitHub Copilot
   • Copilot Chat

5. Look for extensions like:

   • Copilot / Copilot Chat extensions manually installed during VS2022
   • Copilot-related extensions that are clearly duplicates

6. Select problematic extensions and either:

   • To monitor first: [Disable]
   • To completely remove: [Uninstall]

7. After disabling/uninstalling extensions,
   Restart Visual Studio 2026

Notes#

• VS2026 includes Copilot by default, so
  Copilot extensions installed for VS2022 are generally unnecessary
• If unsure which to remove, first try
  disabling “clearly duplicate Copilot extensions” and monitor the results