I'm trying to install ESP8266 and NavSpark (which do install in the normal arduino IDE board manager)
I have tried close to everything in this thread, but boards simply do not become available (they do not show up, they do install). Everything is downloaded, installed, etc, but nothing appears under the board selection, only the originally installed boards. In the explorer, they are marked as installed, until a VS13 restart, then all "installed" boards disappear and I am back to square one. 

I am using Arduino 1.6.5, the latest Visual Studio Community 2013, and the latest download from VisualMicro.

The json files are the ones provided by visualmicro in the wiki. I tried all kinds of json files, either one by one or separated by a comma.

The index files I used were obtained from http://www.visualmicro.com/post/2015/05/30/The-Arduino-Community-Joins-The-Visua.... I tried them as a whole, and by individually selecting them. I also deleted the hardware and tools folders for the different platforms, but that didn't help either.

OK, so you mean that by deleting json files in yourname/appdata/roaming/arduino15, things should work?

Did that. Tried only ESP8266 from http://arduino.esp8266.com/package_esp8266com_index.json. Deleted the hardware and tools folders before trying to install. The folders were recreated, with the correcty files, but on restart, VS failed to display them.

I'm not in a hurry, using the normal arduino IDE for the time being. Did you notice I am using 1.6.5? Maybe there's a new issue there?

No, I already had the ESP8266 installed initially. As well as the Edison and Navspark toolchains. I deleted/deinstalled all of them after I read the forum topics on thuis issue because I didn't see them appear in VS. I then tried to reinstall through the VS installation. That didn't work. It said it installed and the files were put back in the original folders, and the option became grey, but after a restart, everything was beack to "not installed".

That's when I said that I tried about every single combination in this thread.

Maybe it has something to do with the 1.6.5?

NavSpark is under test. You need to have the compiler installed manually under c:\opt.

See this link for a small discussion on the topic. The discussion also contains the link to the JSON file: http://www.navspark.com.tw/forum/supporting-arduino-1-6-x-through-user-hardware-...

Don't think so as I deinstalled everything and the first install attempt was the ESP8266.

However, I don't have the time right now to do experiments. So as long as no-one else has problems, I'll assume it's something on my end.

I'll check back in a week or so.

Additional question: how can I transfer a debugger license? I have a valid serial, reinstalled my PC, and now it refuses the serial with a "Too many validations for this serial" (or something similar)