Sunday, February 26, 2006

VS2003: "unable to read the project file" "the system cannot find the file specified"

OK, so I've had this nuissance for a week before I finally snapped and had to fix it: Every time I started Visual Studio and opened up my project I would get an error message saying something to the effect of "unable to read the project file" "the system cannot find the file specified"...

The web project would not be loaded, only be displayed as "unavailable" and any project with bindings to the web project (IE. the test project) would lose their bindings.

The drill would be to delete the unavailable project and add it anew through file -> add project -> from file. This would then fix the problem temporarily, except I would need to set the lost bindings again.

If I tried to add the project from web I would get the error message stated above.

So how does one solve such a predicament?

Exit VS,
Delete the .SUO file
Start VS
Set the source control that you lost
Done, enjoy error free heaven