Where is the Visual Studio layout saved?

Question

I am having problems with VS2008 moving the windows around and losing tabs when I close it and open again, or when I go from coding to debugging and back. (Yes, I know that it is supposed to save different layouts for coding and debugging). I have tried exporting my settings, but it informs me helpfully that

"Your settings were exported, but there were some errors. Error 1: Some command bar settings were not exported correctly due to an internal error."

Importing them again gives a similar error, and doesn't solve the problem. Does anyone know where VS saves the layout info? Or how to reinitialise the layout, without changing all my other settings? Thanks!

Answer 1

This is what you're after:

Tools > Import & export settings

You will need to make it work though. Maybe manually saving it from My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Settings

Answer 2

• Export your current settings. Don't choose to export the layout settings.
• Reset IDE settings to your favorite
• Import your exported settings

Answer 3

You might want to try Window > Reset Window Layout. This will reset the windows the way they were configured the last time you imported a layout.

Answer 4

It sounds like you might have a permissions problem trying to export the files.

Another possibility that's a little less likely is that your *.suo files are being versioned, and so when you update your projects your layout for that project is updated as well.

Answer 5

Some of the layout information is stored in the registry for the current user.

HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0

If you're really having a lot of problems you can take the desparate step of deleting or renaming this key. Personally, I would rename it, start VS and see if that fixed my import export settings problem.