As most of you already know, I am currently running the Visual Studio 2008 beta. I know it says it is a release product, but occasionally I find that that expectation is unrealistic, so I will call it beta and be content. :-)

My current issue is with toolbox. I cannot add custom items to the toolbox. I have cleared temporary files, used devenv /setup and devenv /resetskippkgs and even reset the toolbox. This shows my desperation? Still the IDE crashes.

Finally, after dinking around a bit, an inspiration came to me. Something is loading in the toolbox that is messing things up. If this is true, then the proper way to clear things out, when reset does not work is to use safe mode. So, here is what I have done to solve this problem.

1. Open a Visual Studio command prompt
2. Type in devenv /safemode
3. Right click on the toolbox and choose the option Choose Items
4. Click each tab. Somewhere in the process, you will notice an exception loading one of the controls
5. Restart Visual Studio normally
6. Add controls

Suddenly, I am in coding "heaven" again. Until next time ...

Peace and Grace,
Greg