Shannon Braun's Weblog

Something happened today and my project and item templates are no longer showing up.  When I start the Visual Studio IDE I get the following message:

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Microsoft Visual Studio
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The automatically saved settings file '\\Settings\CurrentSettings-2007-03-19.vssettings' is not available for write. You can change this file on the 'Import and Export Settings' Tools Options page.
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OK  
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If I use the Import and Export Settings to reset the environment it Visual Studio stops responding and then the dialog for resetting the settings goes away with nothing being reset.

After digging around a bit I found you can also reset the Visual Studio IDE through the command line:

"%programfiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" /resetuserdata

Make sure you don't have Visual Studio open and use the Task Manager to monitor the devenv.exe process until it is done. 

After doing this everything was restored and worked fine.  I did loose some custom keybindings so you will have to set those up again.

Look's like the Acropolis CTP was released a couple of days ago...

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=72386ce5-f206-4d5c-ab09-413b5f31f935&displaylang=en&tm

1. Goto the Visual Studio command prompt.
2. Type in "h.exe workspace 'workspacename' /s:servername" where servername  is the name of your Team Foundation Server and workspace name is the name of the workspace you couldn't create a build type for.  You can find out more about h.exe and it parameters here.
3. Enter the Name of the workspace you couldn't create the build type for, and map a source repository folder to the local folder where the source is found.  The graphic below shows the h.exe UI.  The Name field should show your workspace name.  In the working folders grid you should identify the source "repository folder" and map it the "local folder" where the actual source is found.
   
   
   
4. Click OK

1. Right click on Team Builds within your project and select "New Team Build Type".
2. Enter the name of the build and any comments you have about the build type.
3. Select the solution you want included in this build type. If you don't have any solutions in your list (mine shows one below CompositeUI\CompositeUI-CS.sln) then make sure that you have checked the source into Team Source.  If you added to Team Source through the IDE, it may not be checked in.

 Note: You can verify that you have source checked in by double clicking Version Control item in in the Team Explorer view of your project, then selecting your project in the Source Control Explorer.  You should be able to see your source.

4. Select the solutions and build order, click next.
5. Complete the configurations, click next.
6. Define the Location of the build server and build drops, click next.
7. Select the build options you want, click next.
8. Review the summary and finish.

Use mcee_cs.dat (found at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET\Common7\Packages\Debugger\) to expose addtional type information in the debugger. If you have used C++ in the past, this is the equivalant to the autoexp.dat. There is very little documentation in MSDN. However it is pretty easy to add type information to the mcee_cs.dat file. By doing this, additional information will be added to the watch / locals and debugger ToolTips during debugging. The mcee_cs.dat. changes are only read at startup, so if you make changes while the IDE is open, you will need to shut it down and restart it.

Unfortunately the mcee_cs.dat is very limited. You may only call properties of the type ( no methods ). I also found that VSTweak has the ability to edit the mcee_cs.dat file (although the implemenation is still a bit rough).  I would suggest editing by hand. You can find the VS Power Toys (which includes VSTweak) for the IDE on GotDotNet.