Visual Studio 2008 crashes when opening solutions in a TortiseSVN directory? How do I fix this?

Question

I'm using TortiseSVN for my subversion client on a Windows Server 2008 box and I've got a folder with code checked out into it.

When I go to open the solution file that's under source control Visual Studio 2008 starts and before it can even finish loading the solution from what I can tell Visual Studio crashes. I'm trying to open a solution that has VB code in it. It gives no error messages or warnings. It's just gone.

I have checked the files and they all seem fine. The solution file seems fine when I look at it with a text editor.

This is also Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and I've got all the latest .NET service packs installed.

Has anyone else seen this before and know how to fix it?

Edit: I just did an SVN export to a new directory and it still crashes in the exported directory where there is no longer any SVN attached to it.

Additionally, it crashes EVERY time I try to open the project that came from SVN.

Answer 1

Try opening your solution and projects files in a text editor, and looking for anything strange. I once heard of a similar problem: a solution contained SVN bindings created by AnkhSVN, but Visual Studio had no AnkhSVN installed, and failed to open the solution without giving any meaningful error information.

Answer 2

You should be looking at the solution file with an xml editor, at least then you will get some help for subtile flaw's in the formatting or something like that.

You can also submit feedback to Microsoft on the VIsual Studio Connect site, if the bug turns out to be real.

Some commonsense things todo however would be, goto your visual studio command prompt, start off with "devenv /ResetSettings", that often helps isolate any weirdo add-on or something lke that.

Also, try to build clean with msbuild or vcbuild, then build fully with either one (i.e. if vcbuild can not build your solution, use msbuild). That can help by laying out the symbols and such and maybe clear out some corrupted file or something.

You also may have .suo files from your subversion, those are binary files that do contain some settings, it's common for people to accidentially check them in, but they are usually better off being kept on a per-developer basis (not in the source tree). The /resetsettings will likely clear these out also, but you may want to make sure.

You can also double check the path's to all of the assemblies referenced, that your not going from a 32/64 bit host, and the CLR DLL's are in different path's now etc...

One last thing, if your really stuck, you can get a stack trace and debug the crash a bit ;), see where the fault is occuring and search that module online, your'll often find that somebody may have a specific solution.

Oh yeah, also, hooker's can be trickey. Don't trust them for a minute. Make sure you set tsvn's "only load in windows exlporer" option and configure it specifically for what folders on your system have local-svn working directories, this will greatly reduce the working set for their shell extension. On most any system, over time, one program or another (apple irw.exe or adobe pdf-preloader.exe sort's of ad-ware) will try to work it's way into your shell. You should try to make sure your dev box is rather clean from anything hook's, simular to what VladV was saying...

Answer 3

I had a similar problem and I fixed it and afterwards I wasn't quite sure how I managed it.

It basically involved going to the tools/options menu and setting the source control plugin to none. However, I obviously had to have had the solution open in Visual Studio if doing this was to fix the solution, but yet I thought the problem was I could not open the solution.

The only possible scenario would be if I was able to open the solution, but not open any of the projects inside it, hence able to change the source control settings immediately after opening the solution.

Does that make sense?