Visual Studio 2010: Cannot open file from external drive

Question

Having a strange issue with Visual Studio 2010 Professional (running Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit): if I try to open a regular .cpp file that's stored on my external hard drive by double-clicking on it in Explorer (with VS not running), VS starts up but throws an error message at me saying "The system cannot find the file specified: Y:\path\to\my\file.cpp" (Y: is my external drive). The actual error message in English might be worded slightly differently (I have a localized version), but the gist of it is that it can't find the file.

This is clearly wrong, as I've just double-clicked the file to open it -- it's definitely there. I can open the file fine if I start VS first, and then use the Open menu to navigate to the file. If I move the same file to my C: drive and double-click it there, VS boots and opens it no problem. So for some reason, VS apparently fails to recognize that I have an external drive for the first few seconds of its startup time or something.

Anyone having the same problem and/or know of a fix?

Answer 1

After digging around in the options, I found that unchecking "Open file using directory of currently active document" (Tools > Options > Documents) seems to solve the problem -- at least for me, YMMV. So far, after disabling that option, I haven't gotten any of those errors, and reactivating the option reliably triggers the error again.

Answer 2

I did have that issue, im running windows 7, it was throwing an error untill i set the vs2010 .exe (devenv.exe) to run as admin, that solved it for me....