VS2008 crashing when opening projects.   

Hello! Here's my situation.

I'm using Visual Studio 2008, SP1. Recently (but I'm not sure just when)
it has started to "crash" whenever I try to open a project file. There
is no message or indication of an error; the main window simply closes.
This occurs if I double click on a *.sln file in Explorer. If I start VS
by itself, it loads fine, but then when I try to open a project it
closes immediately. If I try to create a new project, I can walk through
the wizard but as soon as it starts to load the new project, it closes
immediately.

I use VS intermittently. In the not too distant past (few weeks ago?),
it was working fine. Since then I have made quite a few changes to my
system. I understand that makes diagnosis harder.

I started VS in safemode by executing

> devenv /safemode

In the Visual Studio 2008 command prompt window. In this mode it appears
to work fine... I can load projects without any problems. However... I
do have the F# plug-in installed (v1.9.6.0). In safemode my F# projects
are not recognized; I suppose the plug-in isn't loaded. That would seem
to suggest that the F# plug-in has something to do the problem
(although... again... it *was* working when I first installed it). What
else is different about safemode?

I used sysinternal's ProcessMonitor tool to watch devenv during a crash.
Curiously the last thing that it does is read my VMware Workstation
configuration file. I have no idea why it would want to do this. Right
after that, a long list of threads exit (without error it appears) and
then the process exits. Files are closed and all looks fine. I guess the
OS is closing files after the process has exited. That sounds a little bad.

Now it happens that I upgraded my VMware Workstation to v6.5 yesterday.
If VS is sensitive to VMware (again... why?) that seems to suggest that
my VMware upgrade has something to do with the problem.

I welcome suggestions, hints, etc.

Thanks!

Peter

date: Sat, 27 Sep 2008 21:12:14 -0400   author:   Peter C. Chapin

Re: VS2008 crashing when opening projects. (FIXED)   

Peter C. Chapin wrote:

> Now it happens that I upgraded my VMware Workstation to v6.5 yesterday.
> If VS is sensitive to VMware (again... why?) that seems to suggest that
> my VMware upgrade has something to do with the problem.

So it turns out that VMware comes with a Visual Studio plug-in that
allows you to debug programs inside a virtual machine from the host. I
didn't realize it had this feature. Apparently, based on a Google
search, there was an issue with VS2005 SP1 together with a certain
version of VMware 6.0.x that caused essentially the same behavior that I
was seeing. So with that in mind I uninstalled VMware's VS plug-in
(using the "Change" option for VMware in Add/Remove programs). Now my VS
works again. So... apparently the earlier problem is back. I'm using
VS2008 SP1 with VMware 6.5.

It's nice to have Visual Studio working again, although I'm sorry that I
won't be able to use this neat VMware plug-in now that I know about it.
Oh well... I've lived this long without it. :-)

Peter

date: Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:59:28 -0400   author:   Peter C. Chapin