showTerminal Not found

[silicahd]

Visual Studio 1.108.1

Installed ESP Exception Decoder and BoadLab but when i try to open it i get:

command 'espExceptionDecoder.showTerminal' Not found.

I reinstalled and rebooted with no luck.

[dankeboy36]

Hi! Thanks a lot for taking the time to report this, although you have not had a good experience 🙏

To understand what happened on your system, could you check a few quick things in VS Code?

1. Check if the extension is running
   Open the Command Palette (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+P) and run: Developer: Show Running Extensions.

Do you see these in the list?

• ESP Exception Decoder, or
• BoardLab

If one of them is missing, that already explains the missing command.

2. Check if there is an output channel for the decoder extension:
   Open the Command Palette (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+P) and run: Output: show output channels... command, and select ESP Exception Decoder (Log) (if it's visible at all).

3. Check the Extension Host logs:
   With the same procedure, please open the Extension Host output channel.

Do you see BoardLab or the decoder extension in the logs:

2026-01-20 10:33:05.435 [info] ExtensionService#_doActivateExtension dankeboy36.boardlab, startup: false, activationEvent: 'onStartupFinished', root cause: dankeboy36.esp-exception-decoder
2026-01-20 10:33:05.528 [info] ExtensionService#_doActivateExtension dankeboy36.esp-exception-decoder, startup: false, activationEvent: 'onStartupFinished'

4. Check the BoardLab logs:
   Please locate and share the BoardLab and BoardLab - Arduino CLI output channels if they are available in your VS Code.

Thanks again for opening the issue and letting me know. The extension’s runtime is still in an early stage, so feedback like this is super helpful.

[silicahd]

Thank you for the response. i just uploaded Visual Studio to the latest version and restarted. I also removed the arduino tools i installed before.

I removed both extensions and just installed ESP Exception Decoder. If i got to CTR+Shipt+P and look at the running extension i only see BoardLab with this error

From here checking the log will now show the extension.

Thank you so much for your help.

[gblurr]

Hi, I have the same issue as you, how did you resolve the problem? On the Running Extension tab I only see BoardLab but the extension never activates, I just have the state message "Activating..." on the left.

The log indicates this issue :

[dankeboy36]

Hello,

Thank you for your patience. I am sorry for the bad onboarding experience.

The problem has now been fixed in BoardLab. A third-party library caused a packaging issue on Windows, which prevented the extension from activating.

Please update BoardLab to version 0.0.9 (or newer) and restart VS Code (or run “Developer: Reload Window”). After that, the command should work.

The latest ESP Exception Decoder release also adds automatic crash detection and decoding. Crashes from the serial output should now be detected and decoded automatically. I hope you will find it useful.

Please try the new versions and let me know if everything works on your side.

Thank you again for reporting this.