VS 2010 Properties Page Fail to Show-COM object that has been separated from its underlying RCW cannot be used

Question

I'm using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate edition, but now it won't show the project properties page. Instead an error message show up saying An error occurred trying to load the page. COM object that has been separated from its underlying RCW cannot be used.

This error has plagued me for a long time. I tried almost everything (uninstall/reinstall/repair/uninstall addins, etc) except reinstall OS. Help me out. Thx a lot!

Answer 1

Finally I found out what had gone wrong. It's misbehaving addin - TestDriven.NET. But things could be different for you. But anyway, it's addins. The process to find this is that you Goto "Tools -> Options" dialog. Goto "Environment -> Add-ins/Macros Security" node. Uncheck "Allow add-in components to load". And then restart VS 2010 to see if the issue goes away. If it does, then it must be an addin in those folders specified. And next step is to enable addins to load, and remove the directories in the list one by one to identity which addin caused the issue. And at last, disable or simply remove/uninstall it.