Tuesday, April 10, 2007

"THE PROJECT TYPE IS NOT SUPPORTED BY THIS INSTALLATION"

"You turn on your computer as every normal day, grab your coffee cup, prepare yourself a nice warm coffee as Windows starts, of course with the usual amount of sugar -please, don't exaggerate- and go back to your nice and comfortable desk, your Kingdom, then start C# Express -or any edition of Visual Studio 2005- and decide to create a .NET Framework 3 project from scratch, so you click on "New Project" and select "Window Application (WPF)"; the hard-drive then emits the normal sounds of "working/busy" while the new project is being created, but suddenly the following message pops up: "The project type is not supported by this installation". You say: "WHAT!!!", and with that your great day has turned into a #$%&$@ nightmare ..."

No, the above is not part of the plot of a movie scene, it's life, real life and it's just happened to me. Fortunately, I found this thread on MS forums which presented a quick and easy fix, which -at least in my case- worked.

The fix:

  1. Open a VS 2005 Command Prompt,
  2. Enter the following command: regsvr32.exe "%vs80comntools%\..\IDE\projectaggregator.dll", and finally
  3. Execute %vs80comntools%\..\IDE\VCSExpress /setup (if you are using c# Express), or instead, execute %vs80comntools%\..\IDE\devenv /setup (if you are using VS 2005).

Take due note that "%vs80comntools% ..." is an environment variable, so the above-mentioned command lines should work "as is". However, if it doesn't because the path is not found -maybe some or all of the environmental variables set by the IDE are currently messed up in your system- just replace the "%vs80comntools%" term with your real path to the files' folder and the command should now execute.

Now, try to re-create the project again and it should all now go ok, as if nothing wrong had happened in the first place.

Cheers!
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7 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:48 AM, September 03, 2007

    The paths are the wrong way round. VCSExpress for Express and devenv for VS 2002 Standard/Pro/Enterprise

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ultrahead12:11 PM, September 03, 2007

    Ooops! You're right ... typo ... it's fixed now ... thanks for letting me know!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous12:38 PM, September 03, 2007

    You wrote, "Of course, you should substitute "%vs80comntools% ..." with your real path to the files' folder."

    vs80comntools is an environment variable. It is already set to the right path. All you need to do is type the command exactly as shown, including the quotes and percent signs. The command-line interpreter will expand it to the right thing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ultrahead12:46 PM, September 03, 2007

    At the time I experienced the problem, using it "as is" didn't work for me -the path wasn't found, so I guess the IDE's environment variables were kind of messed up for me.

    Anyway, I'll change the psot to a "more proper" way (if ... doesnt' work, try changing ...).

    Thanks again!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous8:57 AM, November 20, 2007

    Thanks, useful article

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous6:10 PM, October 18, 2008

    How do you open a VS 2005 command prompt??

    ReplyDelete
  7. Ultrahead7:51 PM, October 18, 2008

    Let's say you have Visual Studio 2005.

    Go To:

    Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 -> Tools -> Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt

    Of course, that if you have a directory on the start folder named "Microsoft Visual Studio 2005", but that can vary. For instance, if instead you have "Microsoft XNA Game Studio 2.0" then in the "Tools" folder you will find "XNA Game Studio Command Promopt".

    ReplyDelete

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