title: Android SDK Installed, but adb.exe Missing
body: <p>After my <a href="http://forums.xamarin.com/discussion/55415/error-object-reference-not-set-to-an-instance-of-an-object#latest" rel="noreferrer">Visual Studio install suddenly lost the ability to deploy my Xamarin app to an android emulator</a>, I decided to uninstall EVERYTHING (Visual Studio, Xamarin, Android SDK) and start over.</p>
  <p>Everything has been re-installed, but the Android SDK does not include the adb.exe file.  The place where I expect to find it is here:</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>C:\Users\costcopc\AppData\Local\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools\adb.exe</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>What went wrong?  How can I fix this?</p>
  <p>I opened a cmd.exe prompt and searched the entire drive (C:&gt;) to find the file - it doesn't exist.</p>
  <h1>Re-Tracing My Steps</h1>
  <p>In case it helps, I will retrace my steps...</p>
  <h2>Uninstalling</h2>
  <p>I un-installed Xamarin first, <a href="http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/getting_started/installation/uninstalling_xamarin/" rel="noreferrer">according to instructions</a>.  I wanted a blank slate so, per those instructions, I also uninstalled:</p>
  <ul>
  <li>Android SDK Tools</li>
  <li>GTK#</li>
  </ul>
  <p>I did not uninstall the Java SDK because, as my very first link explained, I had already used a system restore point to recover a stable version of the Java SDK.</p>
  <p>Next up was Visual Studio.  I used its installer for the uninstallation, and then I followed the <a href="https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3016536" rel="noreferrer">post-uninstall &quot;Secondary installer&quot; instructions</a> it gave.</p>
  <h2>Re-Installing</h2>
  <p>I re-installed VS 2015 first, then I launched the Xamarin Studio installer, which in turn installed the Android SDK for me:</p>
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/1A1fd.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/1A1fd.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
  <p>With everything seemingly installed successfully, I launched Visual Studio and tried to open the Android SDK Manager with Tools -&gt; Android -&gt; Android SDK Manager.</p>
  <p>It worked, but I noticed that a cmd.exe window opened and remained opened, <strong>containing a couple strange error messages.</strong></p>
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/OUEPp.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/OUEPp.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
  <p>There it is: &quot;The process cannot access the file because it is in use by another process.&quot;</p>
  <p>Despite the anomalies, I did use the SDK manager to install 4 more packages.</p>
  <p>Still, I was feeling uneasy about the error messages so I figured it was time to reboot.  After the reboot the situation became worse.  Before, Visual Studio was at least able to launch the android SDK manager.  Now it was altogether unable to launch it:</p>
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/aAfO1.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/aAfO1.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
  <p>That oddball SDK path <code>C:\Users\costcopc\AppData\Local\Android\ANDROI-1</code> had disappeared!</p>
  <p>Xamarin Studio was also unable to launch the SDK Manager:</p>
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/mGyaL.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/mGyaL.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
  <p>Now I chose to execute a Xamarin Studio installation &quot;repair.&quot;  Xamarin acted like the Android SDK was installed, and so it did nothing to fix it.</p>
  <p><strong>Again, what can I do to fix this?</strong></p>