VS 2008 Compatibility with Older VS 2005 Add-in Packages

I've helped a few people over the last week who have run into issues with VS 2008 where it would immediately crash when the IDE was launched, or upon creating new projects (usually failing with a "Visual Studio has encountered an unexpected error" dialog).

After debugging the issues, it turned out that they were caused by an older VS 2005 add-in that people had installed on their machines that wasn't compatible with VS 2008.  In each of these specific cases it was an older version of the VisualSVN source control utility (note: Version 1.3.1 of VisualSVN works fine with VS 2008 - but older versions have problems).

By default when you install VS 2008 on a machine that has VS 2005 on it, setup will use your existing settings to configure VS 2008, and will import your current VS 2005 preferences and add-in packages.  If you see any crashes or issues (especially upon first launching the IDE) it could be that they are caused by one of your older add-in packages having some compatibility issue with VS 2008.

If you run into a situation like this, one option to try is to launch VS 2008 in "safemode".  This will launch the IDE with add-in packages disabled, and provides you with a good way to determine whether it might be an add-in causing the problem.  You can launch VS 2008 in safemode by passing the /safemode switch to the VS 2008 devenv process from the command-line:

If you discover that the problem you encountered is related to an add-in, you can use the Tools->Add-In Manager menu option to disable the add-in within the IDE.

As a general best practice, I'd recommend that you always keep close track of the add-ins you have installed with Visual Studio, and make sure to periodically check for updates of them (especially when upgrading to VS 2008).  If you do ever report an issue with VS - please also make sure to detail the add-in packages you have installed, as this can help a lot in our investigations.

Hope this helps,

Scott

P.S. Ilya Ryzhenkov from JetBrains recently published a blog post that details the plans to update the popular ReSharper add-in for VS 2008.  You can read it here.

31 Comments

  • Thanks a lot! I was thinking i had to reinstall the whole VS plant again, but upgrade/reinstall of VisualSVN did it.
    Also for the safemode tip.

  • Great post! Just bit too late for me, I reinstalled VS already again :)

  • I've heard the Web Deployment Project is also not compatible and is not included with VS 2008 by default. Is there any reason (from a user's perspective, not a Microsoft perspective) to not include this?

    Since I first discovered this, I have been depending on it to build staging and release versions of my work. Without it, I can only work so long on a project. In the 'release fast and often' world of web applications, I need to be able to put something live for the client often. In short, I really need it. Thanks!

  • helpful like usual
    it has already helped (like you used to wish under most of your posts ;) )

  • thanks a lot man ... the /safemode switch is very helpfull.

  • I had VisualSVN 1.31 installed on my VS2005 Pro and it just showed up after my VS2008 Pro installation. Didn't even have to put in the license key for VSVN. VS2008 Pro has been worked like a charm since install... knock on wood.

    Now if we can just convince those Jetbrains guys to ditch X-mas!

    Marcos

  • What about the plugin for dynamically generating the ProfileCommon class? Is a bad hack altogether; I can't find any info about web application model in VS08 with ProfileCommon.. I thought one doesn't have to use the hack plugin anymore :-/. Why can't WAP generate this for me?

    Thank you,
    Andrej

  • Nice Info about SVN addin.
    One thing i need to ask is there a new C# code snippet available for vs2008 as there was for vs2005

  • I have a different issue. I already had VS2005, the ASP.Net AJAX Fromework 1.0 (1.0.61025.0) and the AJAX Control Toolkit (10920 ) on my dev box. I installed VS2008 and it runs just fine. I then installed the AJAX Control Toolkit for VS2008 (11119) and VS2008 still runs and does not crash. The problem is that I now have two versions of all the controls in the AJAX Extensions tab (the control toolkit tab is ok) and any time I try in VS2008 to drop on of them (either one) on a form I get an ambigious refrence error and the app will not compile. VS2005 is still just fine for AJAX with no problems. I did find your article on this for the beta version and I ran DisableAjaxPolicy.EXE which did not resolve the issue.

  • very helpful, thanks a lot!

  • At DeKlarit we'll be releasing a VS2008 version in a couple of weeks.

  • Hi James,

    >>>>>>> I have a different issue. I already had VS2005, the ASP.Net AJAX Fromework 1.0 (1.0.61025.0) and the AJAX Control Toolkit (10920 ) on my dev box. I installed VS2008 and it runs just fine. I then installed the AJAX Control Toolkit for VS2008 (11119) and VS2008 still runs and does not crash. The problem is that I now have two versions of all the controls in the AJAX Extensions tab (the control toolkit tab is ok) and any time I try in VS2008 to drop on of them (either one) on a form I get an ambigious refrence error and the app will not compile.

    This is an issue that we are going to hopefully fix later today with a refresh of the AJAX Control Toolkit. There is a version mismatch with the current build that causes VS 2008 to think it is a non-3.5 version. You can fix it immediately by changing the AJAX Control Toolkit version number to 3.5.0.0. We'll hopefully have a new drop of it today that you can download that has this fixed as well.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • Hi Mike,

    >>>>>>> I've heard the Web Deployment Project is also not compatible and is not included with VS 2008 by default. Is there any reason (from a user's perspective, not a Microsoft perspective) to not include this?

    We are going to release a VS 2008 build of the Web Deployment Project support later this week. So not far off now!

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Scott & everyone

    Wondering if you can help with my VS 2008 crashes. Whenever I use the mouse-wheel down or up, VS 2008 crashes. Doesn't matter the framework targeted, or whether it's a web or Windows project.

    Has anyone seen the behaviour as described above? I have 2 different Vista Business Edition machines, one with VS2005, one with the beta uninstalled. BOTH machines have 2 gigs, 3Ghz CPUs, etc.

    The Application Event log catches this event.

    I have a report.wer file that was noted in the Event log.

    Fault bucket 571948232, type 1
    Event Name: APPCRASH
    Response: None
    Cab Id: 0

    Problem signature:
    P1: devenv.exe
    P2: 9.0.21022.8
    P3: 47317b3d
    P4: msenv.dll
    P5: 9.0.21022.8
    P6: 47317c00
    P7: c0000094
    P8: 0038d1c2
    P9:
    P10:


    If anyone can help, please let me know!

  • Scott,
    Any chance to get my hands on the specs for the add in in VS2008?

  • Hi James,

    >>>>>>> I have a different issue. I already had VS2005, the ASP.Net AJAX Fromework 1.0 (1.0.61025.0) and the AJAX Control Toolkit (10920 ) on my dev box. I installed VS2008 and it runs just fine. I then installed the AJAX Control Toolkit for VS2008 (11119) and VS2008 still runs and does not crash. The problem is that I now have two versions of all the controls in the AJAX Extensions tab (the control toolkit tab is ok) and any time I try in VS2008 to drop on of them (either one) on a form I get an ambigious refrence error and the app will not compile.

    >>>>>This is an issue that we are going to hopefully fix later today with a refresh of the AJAX Control Toolkit. There is a version mismatch with the current build that causes VS 2008 to think it is a non-3.5 version. You can fix it immediately by changing the AJAX Control Toolkit version number to 3.5.0.0. We'll hopefully have a new drop of it today that you can download that has this fixed as well.

    Will this new build work properly in VWD 2008 express? I am just curious since I did change the version numbers and it didn't completely fix the issue with VWD express.

    thanks,

    Bryan

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • >>>>>>> I've heard the Web Deployment Project is also not compatible and is not included with VS 2008 by default. Is there any reason (from a user's perspective, not a Microsoft perspective) to not include this?

    >>>We are going to release a VS 2008 build of the Web Deployment Project support later this week. So not far off now!

    So I've heard. But then why is not a part of Visual Studio? Is it just because it's late, or is there some significant reason not to include it as a standard project type in the default install?

  • Hi, We have installed VS2008 and some developers are complaining that vs2008 is very very slow. Specially when developing asp.net applications the ide designer is so slow that they don't want to use vs2008 and take vs2005 for it. What could be wrong ? I read that vs2008 must be faster than vs2005
    Regards

  • Looking forward to VS 2008, but until ReSharper supports it we can't really move to it. VS without ReSharper is like writing in NotePad :)

  • Nice, thanks. I still can't help hoping that the someone will improve that error message, though.

  • Hi Scott,
    in VS2008 the Project Type (File | New project) "Business Intelligence Projects" is gone away. How can I convert my Report Server project.
    Best regards
    Fritz

  • Hi Phil,

    >>>>>> Wondering if you can help with my VS 2008 crashes. Whenever I use the mouse-wheel down or up, VS 2008 crashes. Doesn't matter the framework targeted, or whether it's a web or Windows project.

    Can you send me an email (scottgu@microsoft.com) with details on your mouse driver? We've seen an issue with one mouse driver manufacturer where they are sending bogus windows messages which can cause applications to crash (especially on x64 machines). If you send me an email with your details I can have someone take a look and figure it out.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Wim,

    >>>>>>> Hi, We have installed VS2008 and some developers are complaining that vs2008 is very very slow. Specially when developing asp.net applications the ide designer is so slow that they don't want to use vs2008 and take vs2005 for it. What could be wrong ? I read that vs2008 must be faster than vs2005

    Please send me an email with the details of the issue you are seeing (scottgu@microsoft.com). The feedback we've received throughout the betas and final release is that the designer is much faster than VS 2005. If you send me email we can figure out why you are seeing slowness.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Bryan,

    >>>>>>> Will this new build work properly in VWD 2008 express? I am just curious since I did change the version numbers and it didn't completely fix the issue with VWD express.

    Yes - the new build should work with VWD 2008 express as well.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • do hou know if there is a way to integrate Reflector as a tool window in VS2008 ?

  • In Ilya Ryzhenkov's blog posting that you reference, he states that the “C# 3.0 compiler is always used in Visual Studio 2008 C# projects, regardless of target framework." Is that true? Our development team would like to upgrade to make use of the new IDE but we have one developer concerned about using a new C# compiler on our existing 2.0 apps.

  • Are SQL Server 2005 BI projects supported in Visual Studio 2008?

  • Hi,
    Can someone explain whether VS2008 will work with SQL Server 2005? I wasn't sure if VS2008 only works with SQL Server 2008.

    Does SQL Server 2008 Express offer Reporting Services?

    Thanks

  • I too am having the problem with the mouse driver crash when scrolling.

    I've tried several different types of mice and all crash when scrolling.

    On a mac, in boot camp or vmware (yes vmware tools are installed) with apple trackpad drivers, dell HID drivers, Apple Mighty Mouse drivers. All when scrolling crash VS2008.

    Any help would be greatly appreciated.

  • Hi Patrick,

    >>>> I too am having the problem with the mouse driver crash when scrolling.

    If you can send me email with more details on this I can loop you in with someone on the team to help.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • I figured out the issue. My fix was to change the mouse wheel options in the Mouse control panel in Vista to roll the number of lines 3 instead of one screen at a time. I have confirmed this issue on several computers now. With it set to one screen at a time Visual Studio and Help will crash 100% of the time.

    BTW, the default is 3 lines at a time, my personal preference is one screen at a time, but I can live with this workaround.

    Thanks for your help, let me know if you still want any further information from me.

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