Why is Visual Studio not able to open .csproj files?

Question

Hello!

I have the odd problem that I am not able to open the properties of my .NET projects in Visual Studio. If I try to open it by clicking on the Properties tree node in the Solution Explorer I get the following message:

There is no editor available for '....csproj'. Make sure the application for the file type (.csproj) is installed.

If I try to open the project properties by the main menu nothing happens at all.

I already tried to reset the Visual Studio settings by command line and a repair installation but nothing helped so far.

I use the Visual Studio 2008 in version 9.0.30729.1 SP including the XNA Game Studio 3.0, ReSharper 4.1 and Visual SVN 1.5.1.

It is occurring on all my projects and seems to be a local issue because my co-workers do not have this kind of problem.

Help is much appreciated!

Thanks, Michael

Answer 1

Have you installed the C# part of Visual Studio? You might have unchecked it in a custom installation.

Answer 2

Do you have SQL Server installed? If so are you accidentally opening the project with the VS2005 shell that's installed as part of SQL Server?

Answer 3

Sounds to me like you need to do a full uninstall and reinstall from scratch. You've likely lost some setting or corrupted some registry key. You can either fish around until you find your errant setting, or you can spend the time to just reinstall.

Don't do a repair install. Remove VS (and the other programs/utilities you mentioned) from your machine and do a clean install.

Answer 4

Repair installation doesn't worked as I mentioned in my question. The problem was solved by using the command line with

devenv /ResetSkipPkgs

BUT after that I had to reset some of my Resharper settings.

Answer 5

Open up the .csproj in notepad and check the <ProjectTypeGuids> tag, if it exists then you may not have one of the project types installed.

Answer 6

Sometimes (I just had it, came here from google, then sovled it) it's local to a specific project when you are trying to open properties; you get the message. Then you can try to close the solution and re-open it.

Answer 7

devenv /ResetSkipPkgs worked for me Alex Litinsky

Answer 8

I HAD THE SAME PROBLEM, WHEN I TRIED TO OPEN A FILE WITH .SLN, I GOT THE ERROR THAT VISUAL STUDIO WAS NOT ABLE TO OPEN FILE (.CSPROJ). THE SOLUTION WAS TO INSTALL THE LATEST VERSION OF SILVERLIGHT SDK. HTH