visual studio not remembering open documents & startup project

Question

I believe this information all lives in your .suo file and/or .user file. If they've become corrupt, VS will struggle, so it'll revert to the default.

Maybe try exiting VS, deleting the .suo and/or .user files, start VS and set it up how you want, restart it again and see if it remembered the settings.

I ran into this problem in Visual Studio 2015. Removing the .suo file in the solution root did not fix the problem. I needed to remove everything under the following directory:

\\SolutionRootFolder\.vs\FolderWithSolutionName\v14\

.vs is a hidden folder and .suo is a hidden file under the v14 folder that must be deleted along with the vbcs.cache folder.

Update for VS2017: The problem still exists in VS2017 with the v15 folder.

In Visual studio 2015 :

Tools -> Import and Export Settings -> Reset all settings

It worked for me.

Happy coding :)

This doesn't address the startup project issue, but checking the "Reopen documents on solution load" checkbox fixed the remembering open documents issue for me.

You can change that setting here:

Tools -> Options -> Projects and Solutions -> General -> Reopen documents on solution load

Not sure if that checkbox existed before I upgraded Visual Studio 2017 to version 15.8.3 or if it got reset somewhere along the way