"Project Unavailable - Object reference not set to an instance of an object."

Question

I've run into a problem in Visual C# 2010 Express. I'm going through a tutorial series for XNA and I'm at an impasse because 2 of the 4 projects in the solution refuse to load. I don't know exactly what I was doing when this happened, but it involved Windows Forms. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling Visual Studio and the XNA Framework, restarting the computer, and loading an older project without any possible erroneous code (IE a save from last night) with no luck.

Upon opening the solution, I get a message that says "One or more projects in the solution were not loaded correctly."

In the solution explorer the projects say "RpgEditor", "RpgLibrary", "EyesOfTheDragon (unavailable)" and "XRpgLibrary (unavailable)."

The output text says:

C:\Users\Owner\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\EyesOfTheDragon\EyesOfTheDragon\EyesOfTheDragon\EyesOfTheDragon.csproj : error  : Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

C:\Users\Owner\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\EyesOfTheDragon\XRpgLibrary\XRpgLibrary.csproj : error  : Object reference not set to an instance of an object.


Loading C:\Users\Owner\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\EyesOfTheDragon\EyesOfTheDragon\EyesOfTheDragon\EyesOfTheDragon.csproj ...
C:\Users\Owner\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\EyesOfTheDragon\EyesOfTheDragon\EyesOfTheDragon\EyesOfTheDragon.csproj : error  : Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

If I go to the .csproj files and try to open them manually, I get an error that says"

"devenv.exe - Entry Point Not Found

The procedure entry point_Atomic_fetch_sub_4 could not be located in the dynamic link library MSVCR110.dll""

Other .csproj files open with no trouble. I manually replaced the .dll file but nothing changed.

If anybody has any ideas as to what could be causing this and/or how to fix it, please let me know. This is driving me crazy.

Answer 1

I've had a similar problem in the past where I found an offending install overlaid a newer version of a library (in your case, I presume it's MSVCR110.dll) with the version needed by VS. If memory serves, something similar happens when you attempt to install .net 4.5 and it effectively hijacks VS2010 sandbox libraries.

Sorry I can't help you with the specific culprit, I'd look at something along those lines.

Good luck.

Answer 2

I solved the problem somehow by uninstalling everything related to programming and then reinstalling everything. I don't know what did the trick, but everything seems to be working now.