Fixing a broken toolbox (In Visual Studio 2010 SP1)

 

I was recently running into a situation where every time I opened Visual Studio 2010 SP1 the following message would appear for about 60 seconds or so:

"Loading toolbox content from package Microsoft.VisualStudio.IDE.Toolbox.ControlInstaller.ToolboxInstallerPackage
'{2C98B35-07DA-45F1-96A3-BE55D91C8D7A}'"

After finally get fed up with the issue I started researching it and decided that I’d share the steps that I took to resolve it below:

• I first made a complete backup of my registry.
• I then removed the following key:
  [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Packages\{2c298b35-07da-45f1-96a3-be55d91c8d7a}]
• I went to the following directory: C:\Users\Your Name Here\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\ and created a folder called bk and moved the .tbd files to that folder (they are hidden so you will have to show all files). I then removed the .tbd files in the root directory.

 

• I then launched Visual Studio 2010 SP1 again and it recreated those files and the problem was gone.

Anyways I hope this helps someone with a similar problem. I created this blog partially for myself but it is always nice to help my fellow developer. 

Thanks for reading.