Windows SDK Troubleshooting: my solution file won’t open

There’s lots of great new technology around and if you recently upgraded to Visual Studio 2008 you may have noticed a problem. Even with Visual Studio 2008 installed, you may have found that some of your Visual Studio solution files (.sln) don't open when you double-click on them. Instead, nothing happens. Is it a problem with the brand new Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 that you installed last week? A bug in Visual Studio 2008?

Nope. It’s probably because you created that solution file with a pre-release version of Visual Studio. When the RTM version of Visual Studio 2008 reads the file, it doesn't recognize its earlier beta version’s solution file signatures and quits, without an error message. Not to worry; it’s easy to fix. Read Andrew Arnott’s explanation and workaround posted on his SECOND day on the Visual Studio Platform & Ecosystem team. How’s that for customer focus? Thanks, Andrew!