How can I recover a corrupt .csproj file in Visual Studio 2010?

Question

My PC
Windows 8 Preview Release
Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone

My App is in
Solution A
Project B

Story
The screen is freezing when I type codes
I power off the PC then restart
When I load the sln in VS2010 for wp
VS2010 said

"Solution A (0 projects)
Project B (unavailable)
The project file cannot be loaded

So I tried to "Edit B.csproj" in VS2010, it shows error

B.csproj : error : Unable to read the project file 'B.csproj'.
B.csproj: The project file could not be loaded. Root element is missing.

Help
How can I open my solution correctly? :(

Answer 1

The easiest thing to do is probably to create a new project file. The simplest way to do this would be to:

1. Open a fresh copy of Visual Studio
2. Create a project in a different location of the same type as B, with the same name.
3. Close that copy of Visual Studio
4. Copy the newly created B.csproj file to the directory where all your source for B is, overwriting the existing B.csproj file (but take a copy of it, just incase you need it!).
5. Load Visual Studio and open Solution A.

You'll note that the project doesn't contain any of the files / references you'd expect and will probably contain a "broken" reference to Class1.cs or any other files that were added to the new project file when Visual Studio created it. Now:

1. Make sure Project B is selected in Solution Explorer and click the "Show All Files" icon. It's the one that has a picture of 3 files overlaying each other in it, to the left of the Refresh icon.
2. You'll be able to see all the content of your project but "greyed out". Select each file/folder you want to add back, right click and choose "Include In Project".

Assuming there's nothing too complicated about your project, you should only now need to re-add any References and it should compile and run. Any further things you can probably work out by using a tool like Beyond Compare to compare the new project file and the original project file to look for things you've missed.

Most important of all: Start using Source Control!

If you were, you'd be able to recover a previous version of your project file and not have to go through this hassle. Pretty much any source control solution you can think of can be run on a PC without requiring a dedicated server. One of the easiest to setup is VisualSVN Server, which is free for personal and commercial use.