Digital Earth Weblog

I’m seeing this very informative error message several times per day when trying to run an application from within Visual Studio 2005 Professional:

Googling for that error message reveals that it can be caused by several issues:

• Source code control plug-ins. We’re using Subversion without any Visual Studio plug-ins, so I’m confident that is not the problem.
• Corrupted Windows Scripting Host. (Haven’t tried to update it yet.)
• Some unidentified error in the project metadata files.

I get around it by:

1. Opening the project properties.
2. Selecting the Compile tab.
3. Changing the Options Explicit value from On to Off.
4. Saving the project (Save All).
5. Changing the Options Explicit value from Off back to On.
6. Saving the project (Save All).
7. Running the applications again.

Damn tedious, and a distraction no developer needs. If you have a suggestion on how to fix this I’d be grateful for a comment.