Visual Studio 2008 Goes *POOF*

Here is the scenario, I start Visual Studio 2008 and from the startup page select the solution file I want to load, after a few seconds Visual Studio just disappears, no warning, no error no nothing, just *POOF*.

This isn’t a new Visual Studio 2008 or Vista installation. I’ve been using these programs and this setup for a fair amount of time without any issues, so it was strange when it all of a sudden started happening.

The only trace I could find that something even happened was an extremely cryptic error message in my Application Log:

.NET Runtime version 2.0.50727.3074 – Fatal Execution Engine Error (707C5FC0) (80131506)

System

–
Provider

[ Name]
.NET Runtime

–
EventID
1023

[ Qualifiers]
0

Level
2

Task
0

Keywords
0x80000000000000

–
TimeCreated

[ SystemTime]
2009-05-12T15:16:50.000Z

EventRecordID
15315

Channel
Application

Computer

Security

–
EventData

.NET Runtime version 2.0.50727.3074 – Fatal Execution Engine Error (707C5FC0) (80131506)

 

My development environment is a Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit with SP1, and I’m running Visual Studio 2008 with SP1. I’ve never had an issue up until yesterday when I was trying to open a very larger solution from work, this seemed to spark the underlying issue.

After some Googling I found this thread on the MSDN forums, which describe the exact same issue I was having but dealing with the WPF designer, or opening up a XMAL document in design view with Visual Studio 2008. A few responses down in the tread you get a reply with a link to a number of hot fixes for this issue.

Of the above fixes I installed the WIndows6.0-KB963676-x64.msu and the NDP20SP2-KB963676-x86 and x64 versions. That seems to have fixed my issue, I can open, build and work normally in my large solution.