Why did my Visual Studio 2008 stop recognizing .aspx and .css files?

Question

I formatted and reinstalled my system today. I reinstalled VS 2008, but all my .aspx pages are no longer syntax highlighted (the text editor displays them in plain black font color) and IntelliSense isn't working on these pages either. The font color issue appears for .css files, too.

And I also cannot see aspx pages in Design Mode, only in Source Mode.

Does anyone know what's going on? Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

Did you customise the installation? I don't know much about the intricacies of VS2008, but is it possible that you accidentally deselected some web authoring component?

Answer 2

Sounds like the install might not have gone well. Try do a repair on the install. Otherwise also try and reset your VS settings in the [Tools/Import Export Settings] menu.

Answer 3

I had an identical problem. But my environment just seemed to wake up in this state one day by itself. Running the following from a command prompt took care of it for me.

devev.exe /ResetSkipPkgs