Visual Studio (2013) doesn't list "Device" option for Windows Phone app deployment

Question

I have Visual Studio 2013 with Windows Phone 8 SDK installed. The phone is unlocked and recognized by the machine. However, very often Visual Studio doesn't list either "Device" (not emulator either) in the list of deployment target. If I create a new solution and add a Windows Phone application, then I can see "Device" and emulators in the list, but when I load an existing solution with project of various types, I can only see "Start" and "Attach to IIS" as deployment choices. I tried to delete solution temporary files, but this didn't help.

So what makes VS lose Windows Phone deployment options and is there any way to fix it?

Answer 1

As @WiredPrairie suggested, setting a project as a Startup project (and the single Startup project) resolved this issue. Sometimes you may need to delete *.suo file and reload the solution.

Answer 2

In case anybody has problems in getting the "Device" option in the application toolbar, I noticed that it makes a difference, which programming language you use: using a Lumia from Nokia: with a windows phone c++ project Visual Studio did not list the "Device", just various emulators, with Windows phone 8.1 visual basic project it did list the "Device" option. Probably there are no c++ libraries on the phone. Just to let you know.